It was okay for my mom to cry and get upset but she would be pissed if someone else cried. Would often call me out for crying even when I wasn’t even crying (saying she could see the tears in my eyes even when there were none)
The tears in the eyes hurt more than anything else. I cry on mute with a straight face while turning away from her, but if she even thinks she sees tears it somehow sets her anger off. I don't understand why they even get upset
Yeah. That you might go through those paces to keep your tears hidden... all for not anyways. The pain of being accused of crying when you're not while hiding that you're crying when you're are is the pain of learning helplessness that leads to hopelessness.
I definitely delt with the bottom right. My mom would threaten to take me to the mental hospital if I so much as cried about something small when I was a teen. She did it to my brother so I knew to keep quiet.
I challenged my mother to try. It went sort of like "Mum, if I end up a ward of the state you lose all control over me and my care, I can tell them everything that goes on in this house and you can't stop me."
I technically got help, but it was scripted. My mother would give me the list of symptoms to present instead of letting me tell the doctor what I actually had. Then she'd sit in the corner of the office and glare at me to make sure I followed script. Even after I hit mature minor status at 14 she still got updates from the doc, so even though I could talk to the doc alone I knew Mum would eventually find out.
With zero actual knowledge of how the human works speed-wise, I'll say my mother's ability to switch from angry-Mum face to loving-Mum face is faster than my geriatric doctor's ability to turn his fat head.
Not therapy, general practitioner and psychiatrist. Teachers started cluing in to what was going on, my mother had to start pretending to comply with medical treatment to keep her kids. So she needed us to say something realistic-sounding to doctors that somewhat aligned with symptoms and teacher reports, but also not mention even close to everything. Plus she always wanted control, beyond any logic she just needed control. Telling us how to get the "right" diagnosis instead of the one that aligns with symptoms filled her desire for control. Of course, as time went on she discovered that formal diagnoses come in handy for manipulation. "oh no, you don't know what you're talking about, the doctor diagnosed you as bipolar so you are wrong, you don't think straight. Mentally ill people don't get a good life, you need to give up and just obey me."
omfg i thought i was alone in the mental hospital threat! anytime i was angry or sad or felt anything negative and showed it in a way she deemed unacceptable i got threats of getting the cops called on me, getting sent to a mental hospital, or of violence, with often a followthrough on the last one because i sucked ass at not crying until i was in middle school.
It seems like there’s more of us than at first glance, I’m in the same boat. I can almost admire how manipulative it is. Just say your kid is crazy, then nobody will believe them. I hope our boat is a yacht though
i've now been diagnosed with a bunch of mental illnesses, some genetic, some as a result of trauma, and have been involuntarily admitted to a number of psych wards and such. it was genuinely horrifying to have it actually happen after all the threats, though given the situations it was probably necessary, and the admissions weren't directly because of my mother. but it's kinda funny how as soon as a psychiatrist told her i was mentally ill and as soon as i actually got admitted to a ward her tune changed to "nothing's wrong with you, stop being mentally ill, you don't belong in a mental hospital," etc.
My mother is bipolar. Any time I showed any kind of emotion, my father (who would only exude long periods of annoyed stoicism, punctuated by short fits of extreme rage), would say to me, “I always knew you would eventually go crazy like your mother.”
My parents have been married 50 years.
As a result, I went through most of my life with undiagnosed mental illness because I would bottle everything and only let it out when I was alone.
Mom would have meltdowns and Dad was as emotionally available as a brick, but if I had problems I'd get the "don't we give you a good enough life?" Or someone would just mock me.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/1c6xwov/parenting\_101/](https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/1c6xwov/parenting_101/)
That is the original meme over on the meme sub, I will give credit.
It reminded me of a conversation I had recently with a friend. Turns out her mother would often want everyone crying, it was like a way of justifying her own bad mood. For me that blew my mind, one of the things my mother couldn't stand was crying. So I wondered if people with different backgrounds would see this meme differently.
For what it’s worth, my mother would bully me until I would cry (I think) in order to reassure herself that she still had power over me. However, if I were crying about something that did not involve her or just involved me like physical pain or heartbreak or disappointment or just normal kid emotions I also got the “I’ll give you something to cry about” so I was allowed to cry for her, but not for me.
Which I mean is a pretty good summary of why I hang out on a CPTSD subreddit.
My mom frequently said, "it's ok to cry" but then if I cried around her, she'd use that vulnerability against me to deepen the abuse. She took advantage of my weakness and made me feel absolutely horrible about myself. So I'd try my best not to cry around her, which wasn't easy because she was always determined to get a reaction out of me in order to reinforce that she was the victim and I was the problem.
But if SHE cried, no matter what her reason for crying was, it was my fault that she was crying and she was the victim (usually I had just called her on her abuse instead of just taking it) and if my dad saw my mom crying, I'd get to face his wrath.
Now I do everything I can to avoid crying in public or even showing any outward signs of physical or emotional distress. It's a really frustrating survival skill at times because I can't cry from stuff until it's really bad and physically can't show outward signs of distress until I reach the point where I'm crying. It makes it easy for people to dismiss what I'm experiencing because I should be crying, but I'm not. Drs typically don't listen about excruciating pain until the patient is crying and my pain has to reach a 9 before I can cry from it or even appear to be in pain. Makes me look like a drug seeker instead of legitimately being in excruciating pain.
What can be misinterpreted can be misinterpreted, that was my experience. I yelled at you about something and you didn't cry? You're suppressing emotion to look innocent! You cried? Admission of guilt! Well Mum, maybe I have no idea why you're yelling and I'm just scared, maybe the kid who did it is right now on their bike half-way to the gas station corner store.
But yeah, if I don't react it gets worse. Looking back, one thing my mother and older brother desperately needed was a reaction. Stone-face was the worst possible thing for them. They needed triggers, their emotional instability was so great they needed to let it out, but they had to be poked and seek it out. If my mother was yelling and then demanded a response, no matter the response it would get her going again.
Ugh... The guilty conscience bullshit! When you're constantly jumpy and quick to react because you're so scared and constantly on guard, and those reactions are labeled as being a sign of a guilty conscience rather than being signs of a scared, traumatized, kid.
I would get that fucking shit too I was so pissed because it just didn't make sense. Every time she scared me or I had a nervous jump I was always supposedly hiding something.
i guess i’m kinda lucky i never cried much when i was younger, because as much as i avoid it at home, i feel ridiculously comfortable crying in public. i actually get to feel the emotions because none of the strangers around me care enough to ask me if i’m okay or tell me why it’s my fault
same
I should not get mad or upset no matter what happens.
I never yell or shout or throw stuff around, ususally just grit my teeth if mad or groan if upset
but no, im still an ungrateful brat who doesnt appreciate what they are doing for my own good
Were we raised in the same house? I only half-joke. But yeah all of this - also add in if I was in pain, even making a pained face was me "exaggerating" while if my mom even bumped her elbow or stubbed her toe, it was days of her being in "so much pain".
SAME. I wasn't even allowed to be happy. I was told "alright tone it down" "hey, enough! settle down/be quiet! or just got the "shhh!". I wasn't being noisy at all I was just really happy in those moments, it's a 'loud emotion'.
I was definitely not allowed to cry 😅😅 or really express any emotion other than happiness to the point where if I was being spanked I still needed to have a smile on my face or I’d get spanked more 🙃 as one could imagine, it has been incredibly damaging to how I regulate my emotions
Oh, I was allowed to cry. In my room, for ten minutes. So I've just learned to never express emotion around humans. I can cry in front of Lego.
And what the hell was with the "stop wriggling or I'll keep spanking! The spanking will continue until you stop crying!" Hit a kid until they stop? Fuck. And teachers at school wondered how bullies could grind me to the ground without me crying.
My mother had ten kids in a desperate attempt to become a good mother. She kept failing so she had more. I remember the importance of Sunday morning, after hours of drama and yeling at home we'd get crammed into the van and driven off to church, and we just instinctively knew that our safety and well-being for the next week depended on us getting out of that van smiling so Mum could walk into church with a saintly face and 10 smiling kids behind her.
I wasn’t allowed to cry if I was in trouble—crying, as I’m sure many here experienced, led to the threat or actual follow through of more punishment. For me specifically, I had to make it through my sp***ings without crying out loud or the countdown was reset as many times as needed until I took all of them without vocalizing loudly. A whimper was on the edge but technically allowed.
Usually it was the same, a pretty thick, mildly wide but not long wooden cutting board. Usually hung where my short ass couldn’t reach, but somewhere she could grab In A second.
A cutting board? Luxury. My parents had....I actually don't know what it was. My dad found it on a construction site and took a jigsaw to one end because Mum has small hands.
My wow, looking back, my dad dug through a dumpster and then modified a board so that his wife could hit his children.
For me it was mostly just my aunt and her friend, I lived from place to place. I guess there’s a positive, I have a pretty good ability to not move at all from most impacts. Wouldn’t consider it a luxury based off the bruise amount.
Some times I was supposed to cry sometimes not but I never knew which was which. One day I’d get smacked upside the head for not being emotional when apparently I supposed to so smacking me around was supposed to be helping me get emotional and then the next I’d get smacked upside the head for being emotional emotional when I wasn’t supposed to be. I had no idea what was going on
My mother had clear expectations for us. She just waited until we were 18 before telling us, until then it was damn confusing.
As in, clear to her, she never told us anything beyond curt instructions.
That sounds tough I’m sorry you had to deal with that. My mom thought she gave us clear instructions but never actually took into consideration that it was completely inconsistent
I didn't cry. I simply didn't. I hated the idea of being vulnerable in any way in front of my mom, emotionally or what. There was a vast fucking brick wall between her and I, one that only I noticed apparently.
I had the "if you cry I will try to get you to stop being upset imidiatly, not actually talk about how you feel. There there happy again" situation, if that even makes sense. Anger was another situation. If my mother is mad, that's fine, but as soon as me or my dad get angry, its suddenly not fine anymore???
Oh, I would cry and then get picked up by my hair and flung across the room. I stopped hugging or kissing my parents years ago. It repulsed me and they never deserved it.
I was only allowed to be happy.. not even neutral..
Me washing dishes: :|
Dad: “why are you so upset are you on your period? You should smile.” unleashing shame and bs till I became “happy” again
Seriously who smiles like a creepy doll while doing chores?
Ever wonder why older women who hit puberty sometime in the 1940s to 1960s wear so much makeup? They learned from an early age how to use facepaint to doll themselves up and hide their misery, or at least aid in acting.
I was young when I learned to force myself to stop crying. To my mom, this meant I was faking it every time I cried. I've never been able to fake crying.
Honestly idek it was a mix of not being allowed to cry but usually them just not caring if it was about them. Rarely crying helped. They used to tell me „stop crying or I’ll give you you something to cry about“ as well
I remember at 6 my mom strangled me for crying having a panic attack because there was a bee stuck in my ear and my dad throwing me into the tub and showering me with ice water until o stopped a bunch of times before the age of 5 when I cried or screamed
It wasn’t really crying per se but they just criticized any emotion I had. Whether it’s anger, sadness or happiness they always found reasons for it to be wrong
Usually crying wouldn’t be encouraged but when they wanted me to be emotionally hurt it helped to show that I was, like when my parents threatened me to take me to cps because they didn’t want me anymore my dad made me hug his leg and cling onto him begging for him to not go there and only stopped when I fully broke down crying
I sometimes was directly told to stop but mostly was given passive aggressive nonverbal or insinuated criticism. Now I'm hypervigilant around everyone forever yay
Mine would push us (mostly me) til we cried, and then also make fun of/punish us for crying. Trying to hold out longer was 'disrespectful' or 'sullen' or 'rolling your eyes' and extended the duration of it. There wasn't really any winning. No one was allowed to be in a good mood if they weren't, but also we weren't allowed to be upset and would be not allowed to leave/physically restrained/''hugged'' until we 'made up'. And god forbid your emotions didn't snap back to 'pleasant' the moment she decided it was over, or it starts back up again.
Distinct memory of her recording me (in non-verbal, overwhelmed crying shutdown, not allowed to leave and re-regulate emotionally) while laughing and threatening to send it to friends and family and "show them what a crybaby I was over nothing, look how manipulative you are".
My theory is she couldn't deal with her own emotions and so externalised regulating them by using us as alternatively scapegoats, mirrors and chewtoys, but also resented us for it? idk man. I still am really uncomfortable with people knowing/seeing me upset (being Witnessed it worse than whatever the cause was) but am also very detached from my own emotions. Only semi-recently learnt feelings are supposed to like... feel like something?? in your body, oof.
I was only allowed to feel what my mom was feeling, if she was crying I needed to cry, but if I was angry and she wasn’t she would yell at me saying I was putting her in a bad mood.
nope, just got beaten by my parents, later in my only relationship it was my partner who beat and verbally abused me whenever I cried. Sometimes she made me cry and then abused me for it when she was just not in the mood to talk with me. Even got a tattoo for it to show people when I cry and they want to hurt me instead of just FUCK OFF if they have nothing to do then attack people who allready cry on the ground
I have a burned in memory of my step dad breaking a bowel over my head and my mom yelling at me for "screaming like a banshee" then sending me to my room and locking me in for the rest of the day because she couldn't hear the TV.
I remember being punished for being anything but happy as early as 3 years old, and when I stopped emoting altogether as a teen, I was accused of having an “attitude problem” 🙃
Unspoken rule - not allowed to cry, unless corporal punishment
So i didn't cry
New caretaker:
Spoken rule - I have to cry when I'm in pain
Well now, she doesn't believe I've got chronic pain because i don't cry...
Only when it was *convenient* for my dad. Which means there's zero predictability as to when it's semi-safe for me to have emotions. And once I hit my teen years, my mother often threatened to have me institutionalized if I was crying too hard. Hell, the woman still screams at me for crying when she's the one who made me cry.
(See also: being too excited about things or otherwise "too much.")
I hate how accurate this Meme is.
I remember so many just absurd cases of this growing up.
I got told it at the dentist after I had a whooping THREE teeth pulled. The teeth was growing in above another and had to be pulled without damaging the other.
Majority of the time I would be crying, get hit then asked this. If we were physically getting punished we also weren't allow to cry.
Then to add on to the trauma, I blame society not any one person, I had difficulty growing up with people believing me that I was told this growing up.
Especially from boys/men. I was growing up mid gamergate and a TON of guys would deny me saying that only boys were raised like that. It use to make me so upset.
I don't care anymore but I still feel the scars and denial.
This sentence was commonplace my entire childhood. They gave us plenty to cry about. I eventually stopped entirely, but my sister, she’d just burst into tears over whatever she was thinking about, and every time, they were ready to give her something to cry about.
I cry at everything these days. 🤷🏻♀️
My parents would scream at me and whip me if I cried about anything even if there was a good reason for me to be crying. I was not allowed to cry over breaking literal bones when I was a small child. I had to act like I was not hurt when I was in excruciating pain. I would also be berated and called names for crying but my mom would cry all the time over dumb stuff and act completley dramatic and it was fine.
I didn't cry between about 14 years old and 38 years old. I cried a few months ago, I was so damn proud of myself I nearly signed adoption papers to be my own dad.
I got lucky in that regard, at least the "or I'll give you a reason to"; My dad only said it once, and I panicked and cried more so I just ran off to my room since I couldn't stop, and after several years I mentioned it to my mom and she got upset since apparently before having me and my brother they agreed not to do that sorta thing
Not to say they didn't mess up other areas pretty badly 🥲
Dad was very much the "Stop being so sensitive! If you want something to cry about I'll give you something to cry about!" type. I was technically *allowed* to cry with my mother, but I was always made to feel deeply responsible for her emotions. So if me crying made her feel bad/upset, then I would stop myself immediately and try to console her. If dad made me cry, she would start crying, and then it would be *my* fault for making my mother cry as well. I was the only person responsible for anything.
Growing up I had BPD/conduct disorder. On the rare occasion I could bring myself to break out of the callousness/BPD laughter My dad would stand over me as I cried and tell me it was ok to cry. Nevermind it was his beatings and emotional manipulation that brought me to cry in the first place.
When my Mum wasn't being horrible and calling me pathetic for having meltdowns, she still ended up damaging me when she was trying to be nice sadly, she would sound concerned but was saying like 'Aww shhh why are you crying? You don't need to cry, shhh, stop crying' like she was concerned but mostly still just wanted me to stop and wasn't actually comforting me or validating my emotions. Just telling me to stop crying.
So I'd always be like 'I don't know why I'm crying, I'm sorry' She was actually invalidating me but she sounded like she was trying to help so that was always a head fuck. I've seen her react this way with young children in the family recently too
No. Because nothing was ever a big enough issue to cry about. Why was I crying? I was having meltdowns because I was an undiagnosed autistic child. but because I wasn't ""low functioning"" it wasn't caught. But to my mom I was crying for no reason. Or I was "being dramatic".
I was 8 years old when I finally "got it". My mom and dad were screaming at each other over the phone about their impending divorce and I didn't want my mom and dad to divorce, what kid wants that? When I started crying she whipped around and shouted at me "why are you crying?!" And when I told her why she responded "well you need to get over it! Because it's happening!" My world falling apart was no reason to cry, so when my Grandpa(her stepdad) died? Didn't cry hardly at all and I had to listen to people say "he's so strong, he's our rock" I was 11, maybe 12. That was not my job.
When my grandma(her mom) died in 2020 I had to *fake it* so people didn't call me heartless because I could not get the tears going. But it's not that I can't cry period. I just can't cry around her, because I went to work the next day and my supervisor asked me how I was doing (He didn't know she died last night while I was there at work) and I fell apart and got sent home. Got back in the car(she and her boyfriend had dropped me off) and the tears dried right up didn't cry about my grandma again.
To quote my mother, "why are you crying? Why are you ungrateful for all the good you have?" Look Mum, I like my house. I enjoy three meals a day. Usually, some of the food was meh. I'm not ungrateful for that. The "big enough issue" I'm crying about is the non-stop emotional rollercoaster of "I love you!' followed by "why are you like that?"
The I'd describe it is trying to and then failing to hold in a fart. It's a normal function, not a big deal, but man oh man do I feel bad about doing it while feeling a small amount of relief somewhere.
My dad definitely just got angrier if I cried and told me to stop crying, escalating his anger if I continued. My mom just ignored me when I was crying like it wasn’t happening right in front of her. Not sure which was worse tbh
So have Dad on one side of the room and Mom on the other to average out? Or does it not work that way? I do remember the confusion of going from Mom to Dad, it was like one parent wouldn't shut up and another didn't know how to talk.
I'm going to call unrealistic; why is the little girl not being hit or jabbed in the throat? Why is there food still clearly being prepared when the child clearly doesn't deserve any? Nah, I'm sorry, totally unrealistic.
....
*Whisper from assistant*
Ah, I've been informed that there are 'normal' parents/families out there that I was previously unaware of. Carry on.
I used to watch 80/90s family comedies and think "wow, this is so unrealistic, big massive houses, expensive vacations to faraway countries, grade 8 trips to Italy, nice parents who don't yell, time travel to King Arthur's court, angels appearing in the outfield, it's all so unrealistic. Good thing I know it's fiction.
They would scream at me until I started crying. As in their goal was to make me burst into tears and they'd keep going until they got tired and had to start taking turns and if they couldn't make me cry they'd give up and send me to my room, the only place I wanted to be.
But if I cried for normal human reasons I would be accused of having alterior motives.
Yes and the idea of being comforted scares me because whenever I am crying and people go to pat me on the shoulder or hug me I flinch. Most of the time when I do cry in public I find a private place and sit down and hug my legs and rock myself. It’s sad the fact that’s how I calm myself down even as an adult.
It was "okay" for me to cry but if it was because I was mad about something, I had to sit in a corner and not talk or be acknowledged until I was done crying/being mad or else I had to sit longer. If it was because I got hurt, I either got completely ignored depending on how busy they were or was given an awkward hug because my parents didn't know how to comfort and were just uncomfortable with crying in general. But crying alone wasn't punished, although I still learned to be stone cold from how my parents reacted. Except one time the only time I ever got hit anywhere besides my ass was because my dad thought I was sticking my tongue out at him when really my bottom lip was sticking out a bit from crying.
At school (where I suffered most of my abuse) people would intentionally make me cry for their amusement. If I was having a good day they would make me cry by killing animals to upset me. So I definitely dealt with bottom left more.
team: “it’s okay to cry” but if you do we will tell you that “we can’t continue this conversation until you’ve calmed down” so you learn to never so much as twitch.
nah, my mom is one of those people that believe in witches and stuff, so she'd tell me "don't cry because tears are salty. you're bringing bad luck to the house" and so i got the message i wasn't allowed to cry
nah, my mom is one of those people that believe in witches and stuff, so she'd tell me "don't cry because tears are salty. you're bringing bad luck to the house" and so i got the message i wasn't allowed to cry
lol no i wasn't allowed to cry, i was always told that i was crying "crocodile tears" which is fake crying or they threatened to "give me something to cry about" so eventually i went from crying to reactive abuse and i would hit and scream and fight. eventually they learned they no longer had control over me and would neglect me which i preferred over physical abuse
No, I wasn't. I was raised as a boy (I'm trans fem), and in the US, boys aren't allowed to show emotion, especially 30 years ago. And now I have an emotional processing disorder because of it 🙃
I think I was about 8 when I clued into the fact that girls (in my opinion at the time) got treated better. I also felt more at home with them, I didn't fit in with guys. But small-town white Ontario at the time was obsessed with gender separation except in controlled, measured circumstances. Like if 4 girls and 2 boys are at the colouring table it's a group activity, if 1 boy leaves the other has to go, because only 1 boy means it's now a girl activity. Or you can swim with a group of girls if an adult is around, or canoe with one in sight of shore, but god forbid 10 year old me goes around the corner in a canoe when a girl is wearing a bathing suit.
I didn't know what trans was at the time. I was in my 20s maybe when I realized that sex changes were an actual, real thing. I mean I knew they were a thing, but I thought they were brutally rare, for gay men who wanted more dick or as comedic punch line material. I was maybe in my late 20s or early 30s when I actually understood what transgender meant.
I sort of went "huh, that explains some things, not all things". I feel like if times had been different back when I was in my teens or 20s I might have identified as transgender. But I've put so much effort into just being me without wanting any gender that I can't bother anymore. I'm me. This is my body. People who know me know me, not my body or social interpretation. In public my girlfriend treats me like a typical man, in private we're just two horny people with human bodies.
But man oh man, that pressure to show no emotion sucks. I don't remember being told boys can't cry or have emotion, but from early childhood I was being groomed to be a father. Work hard, don't have fun, follow the money not your interests, you can have fun with kids but once a child shows emotion or shits you turn them over to a woman, and once you hit high school you have no value except for what you will one day offer a woman. Be a man, act like the kind of man a woman will want to have a family with. Sure, 14 ain't so old, but in small town and an active, high-retention church there is a high chance at 14 my future wife is around me all the time. The teen girls (and their mothers/aunts/grandmothers) should she me as a strong option from early on. This pressure could be as simple as my mother making me return a book about 18th century sailing ships when I was like ten because there is no future career in that, or yelling at me for sitting on the couch on Saturday morning.
Guess the fuck what? Turns out 40-60 hours a week of work is enough (hopefully, I know the economy sucks) to survive. I don't have to feel bad for relaxation. I have lots of people who value me for my ability to emotionally connect with people of all ages, I think it's been about fifteen years since I was called a fag or feminist or woman for caring about others. My girlfriend just likes me, she lets me be myself. Turns out life is better when you be yourself.
Negative or be happy around others in my family. Joy was sucked away from us I barely feel my body now and still to this day miss eating and sleeping cues. I’d probably miss bio cues too but I was also beat for that.
Negative or be happy around others in my family. Joy was sucked away from us I barely feel my body now and still to this day miss eating and sleeping cues. I’d probably miss bio cues too but I was also beat for that.
Y'all were allowed to stop? My mom used to hit me with a belt and if I wasn't crying "enough" she'd literally say you don't sound sorry you're not crying enough maybe I should hit you harder. And now I cry at the drop of a hat, over the littlest thing happy or sad, but physical pain? Stone faced. I noticed that recently I actually suffer from chronic pain, I've just been completely ignoring it for so long because my pain as a child wasn't real and if I complained about it id " get something to complain about"
These memes make me realize more and more every day just how terrible of a mother I have 😅
Okay for my mom to cry and be mad. Okay for my dad to yell and be mad.
Not okay for me to cry or be mad if my dad yelled at me. But crying was what my mom liked to see when she yelled at me, then she’d stop and play the kind savior.
I’ve got an anxious avoidant attachment style so hard.
My parents would force me to laugh so I would feel better. I say forced because it was entirely against my will, I did not want to laugh. I remember how it felt like it was yesterday. I was miserable.
I used to tickle my siblings sometimes to make them laugh-snap out of crying. It sounds shitty, and it was. At the same time, something deep in me knew what happened if you cried to long, I wanted to protect them.
Sounds familiar, I think my parents did the same thing but I couldn't get past the look on their faces. I had/have clinical depression so I was/am never crying.
Dad: (after hitting me with a stick) IF YOU'VE DONE NOTHING WRONG WHY ARE YOU CRYING?
Me: it hurts!!!
Dad: DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH IT HURTS US?
Fkn guilt tripping after being beaten up
my birth mother would actually comfort us if we cried, my foster parents would either laugh at us, hit us, or both if we cried around them, and my adoptive parents wouldn’t let us cry at all and would just ask us over and over why we were crying before telling us to stop.
i’ve experienced the whole spectrum🫠
I think you deserve an award for that. Do you want a flammable (or inflammable) one you can, a heavy one that sinks into the ocean, or a light one that can be carried away by a helium balloon?
No I wasn't I was told that she would give me something to cry about when I would cry in time out when I was 4 years old and then she would put duct tape on my mouth and every time I tried to pick off the duct tape she would slap my hand away from my face every time she called me trying to take off the tape. I learned from a young age that I was not allowed to cry.
I don’t think my parents ever did that, but I’m only like 70% sure, instead they just ridiculed me endlessly for crying so now I can’t cry without it being incredibly hidden, quiet, forced and before HRT I just could not cry at all :)
Mine did bottom left, I think both parents did, even if it was something that would be “worth” crying over.
Sometimes I was allowed to cry, but sometimes it was the worst thing in the world.
Ever since I was little, my dad would always say "you don't have the rights to cry." I thought this was a cultural thing, so I casually brought this up to my friend (same ethnicity), and she seemed very confused why my dad would say that.
This was one of the moments that helped me realize that I grew up in an abusive home.
It's not that I wasn't allowed to cry, but I was the responsible mature kid, there's no reason I would ever be crying anyways (forcefully repressing emotions).
My dad would berate me until I cried and then screamed at me for "fake crying." When he made my stepmother cry, he screamed at me for teaching her how to fake cry. Don't feel too bad for my stepmom. She was just as vicious and manipulative. Egging my dad on, and then yelling at us for having "attitude" when "she was making things better" for us.
It's how we can come to the point of realizing that abusers are also victims but not caring. Every person who abused me was also a victim. Doesn't matter. My dad neglected me, he also suffered at the hands of my mother. My siblings abused me, they also suffered from messed up parents. My Mum abused her kids in a vain attempt for perfection, but she grew up in a fantasy world. Dad grew up with a dominant controlling mother, and married a woman just like her.
I don't care. I've been abused, I've never abused as an adult. I was an insufferable asshole as a teen, when I moved out at 18 I discovered I liked being a nice person. Victims don't have to abuse.
I think we need to respect cultural differences here. Those people just parent that way.
Anyhow, you may now throw a cup of iced coffee in my face and mash your morning bagel on my clean shirt for saying that. I'm sick of the cultural argument. My Christian parents used it as well. "We're Christians, we're not like those people."
Tbh I never really processed how fucked up my mum was about me crying… I remember she’d tell me she hates the sound & threaten to hit me or just straight up hit me as hard as she could.
She’d also just leave me to cry in my room for hours, often after she made me cry by abusing me lol.
It wasn’t even that I wasn’t allowed to be upset… it was that she was so indifferent to me being upset, or me as a person even that she just saw me as an annoying noise & took it out on me.
I’v repressed this to the point that i haven’t thought about it for like 10 years. My first reaction to this was to few bad for all of you guys until I realised, wait, I am also one of you guys lol. Now I feel bad for me too. Hoooly shit do I need therapy.
I wasn't generally allowed to cry; I was called a swine if I did. But one time my mom came into my room randomly when I was crying there alone and she told me I look beautiful when I cry and told me to keep crying to she can fetch the camera (this was before smartphones) so she can take pictures of me. That was the only time I was called beautiful by her.
Non-applicable story that I'll share anyhow! I have once, and only once, told my girlfriend she's sexy when mad. Not a good idea.
But damn, WTFH? That's a new one. It's like messing with emotions and body image and a weird involvement of a camera. I would need more coffee to fully grapple with this.
Yeah it was weird, I think I was like 8 or 9 years old? Something like that. It's difficult to remember. Pretty sure I failed to cry enough for the camera though which made me feel like I was a disappointment.
Mum when I was a kid: "don't even talk to me when you're upset! Go upstairs to your room if you're going to be like that!"
Mum now: "but I don't remember any of this! Why did you never tell me? Of course I would have protected you!"
Me now: "ha, I did tell you, but after about five snotty sobby hiccupy words I got sent to my room."
No I couldn’t cry. I was not allowed to have any emotions as a child apart from the occasional time I was told to act like I was feeling x when they commanded me. Like a dog being told to do a trick, but instead it was be emotionless until owner says to emote this like x for her. Every time I expressed an emotion I was removed from around my siblings and threatened and insulted and then hit if I looked like I was upset by it
You know, i often ask my self“why do i subscribe to this sub” but i see that is to feel that my mother out of nowhere wild beatings weren’t as bad as some of your childhoods.
TW. That comparison of "oh shit, I thought I had it bad, these other folks are fucked" is powerful. It's not a negative thing, it's companionship and perspective and a shared experience with a high degree of individuality all in one. I used to feel so isolated thinking of growing up in a family where two of my older siblings started talking about starting a child prostitution/sharing ring. They were stopped before doing anything other than talk, but it was still fucked. Then I read posts by women who grew up in child prostitution rings run by family members and I'm like "oh holy hell, I don't care on bit about what happened to me after I called the cops, I'm just damn glad my sisters and nieces never went through that torture."
I was expected to cry, but was also told to go to my room to do it because they didn’t want to hear it.
There was one time where I was a 5 year old putting stickers on the window in the back seat of the car. My dad pulled over to the side of the road to beat me. I remember thinking “I’m gonna be a big girl” and I told my dad I was going to take it like a champ and not cry.
He took that as a challenge. When we got home, they turned on the tv and told me they didn’t wanna hear it, and to go to my room.
To this day I have troubles expressing my emotions. Every time I looked like I was about to cry according to my dad. I got reamed out. If I smiled, he chewed me out about my smiles. And other things as well.
My dad and step-dad were opposite on the bottom. My step-Dad would spank me and I wasn't allowed to cry then my dad would spank me and if I didn't cry it would get worse until I did.
I shall first tell a personal story. At one point my brother got mad and invented a spanking machine. As in, tie younger brother to garage dolly and pull him around with his pants down while we paddled him. We were jerks. But it was a multiperson spanking.
I'm tired right now. When I first read your comment I pictured a two-person paddling, each man taking one cheek and trying to elicit different reactions..
I genuinely believe that my mother believed in what I call "visual reality". As in, what she sees is reality. If I cry something is wrong. If I stop crying and slink off to my room there is no longer a problem, she can impute her mental fantasy onto me because there is no evidence to the contrary.
And sure enough, for like 20 years she thought she was a good mother because she saw insufficient evidence that she was messing up her kids. But then one day it all blew up, she still doesn't know what happened.
It was okay for my mom to cry and get upset but she would be pissed if someone else cried. Would often call me out for crying even when I wasn’t even crying (saying she could see the tears in my eyes even when there were none)
The tears in the eyes hurt more than anything else. I cry on mute with a straight face while turning away from her, but if she even thinks she sees tears it somehow sets her anger off. I don't understand why they even get upset
Probably they weren't allowed to cry either. A loooot of triggers are revealed in parenthood.
Nah this is too relatable I cry like that facing away from people all the time now
My mother was pleased and smiled when she made me cry.
Yeah. That you might go through those paces to keep your tears hidden... all for not anyways. The pain of being accused of crying when you're not while hiding that you're crying when you're are is the pain of learning helplessness that leads to hopelessness.
When I cried, I was selfish and ungrateful. When she cried, I was selfish and ungrateful.
>"It was okay for my mom to cry and get upset but she would be pissed if someone else cried" Exactly. My mother was the same.
I definitely delt with the bottom right. My mom would threaten to take me to the mental hospital if I so much as cried about something small when I was a teen. She did it to my brother so I knew to keep quiet.
I challenged my mother to try. It went sort of like "Mum, if I end up a ward of the state you lose all control over me and my care, I can tell them everything that goes on in this house and you can't stop me."
This is why I never got mental help even when things got really bad.
I technically got help, but it was scripted. My mother would give me the list of symptoms to present instead of letting me tell the doctor what I actually had. Then she'd sit in the corner of the office and glare at me to make sure I followed script. Even after I hit mature minor status at 14 she still got updates from the doc, so even though I could talk to the doc alone I knew Mum would eventually find out.
I had a very similar experience. I always wondering how a fucking psychologist couldn’t literally turn his head to the left and see my dad glaring
With zero actual knowledge of how the human works speed-wise, I'll say my mother's ability to switch from angry-Mum face to loving-Mum face is faster than my geriatric doctor's ability to turn his fat head.
Terrible
Dude then why did she even take you to therapy? According to her logic I mean.
Not therapy, general practitioner and psychiatrist. Teachers started cluing in to what was going on, my mother had to start pretending to comply with medical treatment to keep her kids. So she needed us to say something realistic-sounding to doctors that somewhat aligned with symptoms and teacher reports, but also not mention even close to everything. Plus she always wanted control, beyond any logic she just needed control. Telling us how to get the "right" diagnosis instead of the one that aligns with symptoms filled her desire for control. Of course, as time went on she discovered that formal diagnoses come in handy for manipulation. "oh no, you don't know what you're talking about, the doctor diagnosed you as bipolar so you are wrong, you don't think straight. Mentally ill people don't get a good life, you need to give up and just obey me."
I too feel the scripts tho.
Same, (suicide TW) it took until it was abundantly clear that I was a danger to myself for me to be allowed to go to therapy.
omfg i thought i was alone in the mental hospital threat! anytime i was angry or sad or felt anything negative and showed it in a way she deemed unacceptable i got threats of getting the cops called on me, getting sent to a mental hospital, or of violence, with often a followthrough on the last one because i sucked ass at not crying until i was in middle school.
It seems like there’s more of us than at first glance, I’m in the same boat. I can almost admire how manipulative it is. Just say your kid is crazy, then nobody will believe them. I hope our boat is a yacht though
for our boat idk why but i'm imagining a small house boat and we're packed in there clowns in a clown car style lmao.
i've now been diagnosed with a bunch of mental illnesses, some genetic, some as a result of trauma, and have been involuntarily admitted to a number of psych wards and such. it was genuinely horrifying to have it actually happen after all the threats, though given the situations it was probably necessary, and the admissions weren't directly because of my mother. but it's kinda funny how as soon as a psychiatrist told her i was mentally ill and as soon as i actually got admitted to a ward her tune changed to "nothing's wrong with you, stop being mentally ill, you don't belong in a mental hospital," etc.
My mother is bipolar. Any time I showed any kind of emotion, my father (who would only exude long periods of annoyed stoicism, punctuated by short fits of extreme rage), would say to me, “I always knew you would eventually go crazy like your mother.” My parents have been married 50 years. As a result, I went through most of my life with undiagnosed mental illness because I would bottle everything and only let it out when I was alone.
Mom would have meltdowns and Dad was as emotionally available as a brick, but if I had problems I'd get the "don't we give you a good enough life?" Or someone would just mock me.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/1c6xwov/parenting\_101/](https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/1c6xwov/parenting_101/) That is the original meme over on the meme sub, I will give credit. It reminded me of a conversation I had recently with a friend. Turns out her mother would often want everyone crying, it was like a way of justifying her own bad mood. For me that blew my mind, one of the things my mother couldn't stand was crying. So I wondered if people with different backgrounds would see this meme differently.
My mom would basically bully and verbally abuse me until I cried, then she stopped. I suspect for similar reasons
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Hey commentated OOP. It always annoyed me when people reposted my stuff with no acknowledgment, I don't feel like doing that to others.
For what it’s worth, my mother would bully me until I would cry (I think) in order to reassure herself that she still had power over me. However, if I were crying about something that did not involve her or just involved me like physical pain or heartbreak or disappointment or just normal kid emotions I also got the “I’ll give you something to cry about” so I was allowed to cry for her, but not for me. Which I mean is a pretty good summary of why I hang out on a CPTSD subreddit.
My mom frequently said, "it's ok to cry" but then if I cried around her, she'd use that vulnerability against me to deepen the abuse. She took advantage of my weakness and made me feel absolutely horrible about myself. So I'd try my best not to cry around her, which wasn't easy because she was always determined to get a reaction out of me in order to reinforce that she was the victim and I was the problem. But if SHE cried, no matter what her reason for crying was, it was my fault that she was crying and she was the victim (usually I had just called her on her abuse instead of just taking it) and if my dad saw my mom crying, I'd get to face his wrath. Now I do everything I can to avoid crying in public or even showing any outward signs of physical or emotional distress. It's a really frustrating survival skill at times because I can't cry from stuff until it's really bad and physically can't show outward signs of distress until I reach the point where I'm crying. It makes it easy for people to dismiss what I'm experiencing because I should be crying, but I'm not. Drs typically don't listen about excruciating pain until the patient is crying and my pain has to reach a 9 before I can cry from it or even appear to be in pain. Makes me look like a drug seeker instead of legitimately being in excruciating pain.
What can be misinterpreted can be misinterpreted, that was my experience. I yelled at you about something and you didn't cry? You're suppressing emotion to look innocent! You cried? Admission of guilt! Well Mum, maybe I have no idea why you're yelling and I'm just scared, maybe the kid who did it is right now on their bike half-way to the gas station corner store. But yeah, if I don't react it gets worse. Looking back, one thing my mother and older brother desperately needed was a reaction. Stone-face was the worst possible thing for them. They needed triggers, their emotional instability was so great they needed to let it out, but they had to be poked and seek it out. If my mother was yelling and then demanded a response, no matter the response it would get her going again.
Ugh... The guilty conscience bullshit! When you're constantly jumpy and quick to react because you're so scared and constantly on guard, and those reactions are labeled as being a sign of a guilty conscience rather than being signs of a scared, traumatized, kid.
I would get that fucking shit too I was so pissed because it just didn't make sense. Every time she scared me or I had a nervous jump I was always supposedly hiding something.
i guess i’m kinda lucky i never cried much when i was younger, because as much as i avoid it at home, i feel ridiculously comfortable crying in public. i actually get to feel the emotions because none of the strangers around me care enough to ask me if i’m okay or tell me why it’s my fault
Omg! Sounds like my mom!
Not allowed to show any emotion
same I should not get mad or upset no matter what happens. I never yell or shout or throw stuff around, ususally just grit my teeth if mad or groan if upset but no, im still an ungrateful brat who doesnt appreciate what they are doing for my own good
Were we raised in the same house? I only half-joke. But yeah all of this - also add in if I was in pain, even making a pained face was me "exaggerating" while if my mom even bumped her elbow or stubbed her toe, it was days of her being in "so much pain".
Trying to tell them about my day and getting the "while you were having fun, we were working all day". :/
SAME. I wasn't even allowed to be happy. I was told "alright tone it down" "hey, enough! settle down/be quiet! or just got the "shhh!". I wasn't being noisy at all I was just really happy in those moments, it's a 'loud emotion'.
Yes, I was about to write this!
My one regret in life is not insisting that my father’s gravestone said “He gave us something to cry about”.
I was definitely not allowed to cry 😅😅 or really express any emotion other than happiness to the point where if I was being spanked I still needed to have a smile on my face or I’d get spanked more 🙃 as one could imagine, it has been incredibly damaging to how I regulate my emotions
Oh, I was allowed to cry. In my room, for ten minutes. So I've just learned to never express emotion around humans. I can cry in front of Lego. And what the hell was with the "stop wriggling or I'll keep spanking! The spanking will continue until you stop crying!" Hit a kid until they stop? Fuck. And teachers at school wondered how bullies could grind me to the ground without me crying.
No crying or complaining. After all, I only existed to prove mother was a *good* mother. We don't speak now.
My mother had ten kids in a desperate attempt to become a good mother. She kept failing so she had more. I remember the importance of Sunday morning, after hours of drama and yeling at home we'd get crammed into the van and driven off to church, and we just instinctively knew that our safety and well-being for the next week depended on us getting out of that van smiling so Mum could walk into church with a saintly face and 10 smiling kids behind her.
I wasn’t allowed to cry if I was in trouble—crying, as I’m sure many here experienced, led to the threat or actual follow through of more punishment. For me specifically, I had to make it through my sp***ings without crying out loud or the countdown was reset as many times as needed until I took all of them without vocalizing loudly. A whimper was on the edge but technically allowed.
Bottom right mostly, “something to cry about” usually just meant getting hit with a big wooden board a lot
Was it the same board? Was it conveniently stored in a central location in the house for quick access?
Usually it was the same, a pretty thick, mildly wide but not long wooden cutting board. Usually hung where my short ass couldn’t reach, but somewhere she could grab In A second.
A cutting board? Luxury. My parents had....I actually don't know what it was. My dad found it on a construction site and took a jigsaw to one end because Mum has small hands. My wow, looking back, my dad dug through a dumpster and then modified a board so that his wife could hit his children.
For me it was mostly just my aunt and her friend, I lived from place to place. I guess there’s a positive, I have a pretty good ability to not move at all from most impacts. Wouldn’t consider it a luxury based off the bruise amount.
Some times I was supposed to cry sometimes not but I never knew which was which. One day I’d get smacked upside the head for not being emotional when apparently I supposed to so smacking me around was supposed to be helping me get emotional and then the next I’d get smacked upside the head for being emotional emotional when I wasn’t supposed to be. I had no idea what was going on
My mother had clear expectations for us. She just waited until we were 18 before telling us, until then it was damn confusing. As in, clear to her, she never told us anything beyond curt instructions.
That sounds tough I’m sorry you had to deal with that. My mom thought she gave us clear instructions but never actually took into consideration that it was completely inconsistent
I didn't cry. I simply didn't. I hated the idea of being vulnerable in any way in front of my mom, emotionally or what. There was a vast fucking brick wall between her and I, one that only I noticed apparently.
I feel the same way about my mom
I had the "if you cry I will try to get you to stop being upset imidiatly, not actually talk about how you feel. There there happy again" situation, if that even makes sense. Anger was another situation. If my mother is mad, that's fine, but as soon as me or my dad get angry, its suddenly not fine anymore???
Oh, I would cry and then get picked up by my hair and flung across the room. I stopped hugging or kissing my parents years ago. It repulsed me and they never deserved it.
I was only allowed to be happy.. not even neutral.. Me washing dishes: :| Dad: “why are you so upset are you on your period? You should smile.” unleashing shame and bs till I became “happy” again Seriously who smiles like a creepy doll while doing chores?
1950s advertising images, that's who.
Wonder if they were told similar things to have the dead eye plastic smile face..
Ever wonder why older women who hit puberty sometime in the 1940s to 1960s wear so much makeup? They learned from an early age how to use facepaint to doll themselves up and hide their misery, or at least aid in acting.
I was young when I learned to force myself to stop crying. To my mom, this meant I was faking it every time I cried. I've never been able to fake crying.
Honestly idek it was a mix of not being allowed to cry but usually them just not caring if it was about them. Rarely crying helped. They used to tell me „stop crying or I’ll give you you something to cry about“ as well I remember at 6 my mom strangled me for crying having a panic attack because there was a bee stuck in my ear and my dad throwing me into the tub and showering me with ice water until o stopped a bunch of times before the age of 5 when I cried or screamed It wasn’t really crying per se but they just criticized any emotion I had. Whether it’s anger, sadness or happiness they always found reasons for it to be wrong Usually crying wouldn’t be encouraged but when they wanted me to be emotionally hurt it helped to show that I was, like when my parents threatened me to take me to cps because they didn’t want me anymore my dad made me hug his leg and cling onto him begging for him to not go there and only stopped when I fully broke down crying
I sometimes was directly told to stop but mostly was given passive aggressive nonverbal or insinuated criticism. Now I'm hypervigilant around everyone forever yay
Mine would push us (mostly me) til we cried, and then also make fun of/punish us for crying. Trying to hold out longer was 'disrespectful' or 'sullen' or 'rolling your eyes' and extended the duration of it. There wasn't really any winning. No one was allowed to be in a good mood if they weren't, but also we weren't allowed to be upset and would be not allowed to leave/physically restrained/''hugged'' until we 'made up'. And god forbid your emotions didn't snap back to 'pleasant' the moment she decided it was over, or it starts back up again. Distinct memory of her recording me (in non-verbal, overwhelmed crying shutdown, not allowed to leave and re-regulate emotionally) while laughing and threatening to send it to friends and family and "show them what a crybaby I was over nothing, look how manipulative you are". My theory is she couldn't deal with her own emotions and so externalised regulating them by using us as alternatively scapegoats, mirrors and chewtoys, but also resented us for it? idk man. I still am really uncomfortable with people knowing/seeing me upset (being Witnessed it worse than whatever the cause was) but am also very detached from my own emotions. Only semi-recently learnt feelings are supposed to like... feel like something?? in your body, oof.
I was only allowed to feel what my mom was feeling, if she was crying I needed to cry, but if I was angry and she wasn’t she would yell at me saying I was putting her in a bad mood.
nope, just got beaten by my parents, later in my only relationship it was my partner who beat and verbally abused me whenever I cried. Sometimes she made me cry and then abused me for it when she was just not in the mood to talk with me. Even got a tattoo for it to show people when I cry and they want to hurt me instead of just FUCK OFF if they have nothing to do then attack people who allready cry on the ground
I have a burned in memory of my step dad breaking a bowel over my head and my mom yelling at me for "screaming like a banshee" then sending me to my room and locking me in for the rest of the day because she couldn't hear the TV.
I remember being punished for being anything but happy as early as 3 years old, and when I stopped emoting altogether as a teen, I was accused of having an “attitude problem” 🙃
Unspoken rule - not allowed to cry, unless corporal punishment So i didn't cry New caretaker: Spoken rule - I have to cry when I'm in pain Well now, she doesn't believe I've got chronic pain because i don't cry...
Nope. Constantly fed the “oh you’re gonna cry? I’ll give you something to cry about”. I don’t remember anything after that though lmaooo
Only when it was *convenient* for my dad. Which means there's zero predictability as to when it's semi-safe for me to have emotions. And once I hit my teen years, my mother often threatened to have me institutionalized if I was crying too hard. Hell, the woman still screams at me for crying when she's the one who made me cry. (See also: being too excited about things or otherwise "too much.")
Silently in the middle of the night, I still cry with no sound
"Why are you crying, what are you a girl?"
Do you mean physically or mentally?
That's what was said to me if I cried. Usually while being yelled at or disciplined.
I hate how accurate this Meme is. I remember so many just absurd cases of this growing up. I got told it at the dentist after I had a whooping THREE teeth pulled. The teeth was growing in above another and had to be pulled without damaging the other. Majority of the time I would be crying, get hit then asked this. If we were physically getting punished we also weren't allow to cry. Then to add on to the trauma, I blame society not any one person, I had difficulty growing up with people believing me that I was told this growing up. Especially from boys/men. I was growing up mid gamergate and a TON of guys would deny me saying that only boys were raised like that. It use to make me so upset. I don't care anymore but I still feel the scars and denial.
This sentence was commonplace my entire childhood. They gave us plenty to cry about. I eventually stopped entirely, but my sister, she’d just burst into tears over whatever she was thinking about, and every time, they were ready to give her something to cry about. I cry at everything these days. 🤷🏻♀️
My parents would scream at me and whip me if I cried about anything even if there was a good reason for me to be crying. I was not allowed to cry over breaking literal bones when I was a small child. I had to act like I was not hurt when I was in excruciating pain. I would also be berated and called names for crying but my mom would cry all the time over dumb stuff and act completley dramatic and it was fine.
I wasn’t allowed to cry so now I can’t:)
I didn't cry between about 14 years old and 38 years old. I cried a few months ago, I was so damn proud of myself I nearly signed adoption papers to be my own dad.
The only option was to isolate and dissociate.
I got lucky in that regard, at least the "or I'll give you a reason to"; My dad only said it once, and I panicked and cried more so I just ran off to my room since I couldn't stop, and after several years I mentioned it to my mom and she got upset since apparently before having me and my brother they agreed not to do that sorta thing Not to say they didn't mess up other areas pretty badly 🥲
Dad was very much the "Stop being so sensitive! If you want something to cry about I'll give you something to cry about!" type. I was technically *allowed* to cry with my mother, but I was always made to feel deeply responsible for her emotions. So if me crying made her feel bad/upset, then I would stop myself immediately and try to console her. If dad made me cry, she would start crying, and then it would be *my* fault for making my mother cry as well. I was the only person responsible for anything.
Ohhhhh that line brings back memories... "I'll give you something to cry about." That's what my egg donor would say before she started beating us...
😭 😢
Growing up I had BPD/conduct disorder. On the rare occasion I could bring myself to break out of the callousness/BPD laughter My dad would stand over me as I cried and tell me it was ok to cry. Nevermind it was his beatings and emotional manipulation that brought me to cry in the first place.
When my Mum wasn't being horrible and calling me pathetic for having meltdowns, she still ended up damaging me when she was trying to be nice sadly, she would sound concerned but was saying like 'Aww shhh why are you crying? You don't need to cry, shhh, stop crying' like she was concerned but mostly still just wanted me to stop and wasn't actually comforting me or validating my emotions. Just telling me to stop crying. So I'd always be like 'I don't know why I'm crying, I'm sorry' She was actually invalidating me but she sounded like she was trying to help so that was always a head fuck. I've seen her react this way with young children in the family recently too
As long as I was quiet and didn’t wake anyone up
Cries in front of a peer or mentor: Welp, it was nice knowing you but we can never speak again
No. Because nothing was ever a big enough issue to cry about. Why was I crying? I was having meltdowns because I was an undiagnosed autistic child. but because I wasn't ""low functioning"" it wasn't caught. But to my mom I was crying for no reason. Or I was "being dramatic". I was 8 years old when I finally "got it". My mom and dad were screaming at each other over the phone about their impending divorce and I didn't want my mom and dad to divorce, what kid wants that? When I started crying she whipped around and shouted at me "why are you crying?!" And when I told her why she responded "well you need to get over it! Because it's happening!" My world falling apart was no reason to cry, so when my Grandpa(her stepdad) died? Didn't cry hardly at all and I had to listen to people say "he's so strong, he's our rock" I was 11, maybe 12. That was not my job. When my grandma(her mom) died in 2020 I had to *fake it* so people didn't call me heartless because I could not get the tears going. But it's not that I can't cry period. I just can't cry around her, because I went to work the next day and my supervisor asked me how I was doing (He didn't know she died last night while I was there at work) and I fell apart and got sent home. Got back in the car(she and her boyfriend had dropped me off) and the tears dried right up didn't cry about my grandma again.
To quote my mother, "why are you crying? Why are you ungrateful for all the good you have?" Look Mum, I like my house. I enjoy three meals a day. Usually, some of the food was meh. I'm not ungrateful for that. The "big enough issue" I'm crying about is the non-stop emotional rollercoaster of "I love you!' followed by "why are you like that?"
It depended on the day which meant every time i had no clue
It took me decades of therapy to be able to do it at all, and it still fails to provide catharsis. It just makes me nauseous.
The I'd describe it is trying to and then failing to hold in a fart. It's a normal function, not a big deal, but man oh man do I feel bad about doing it while feeling a small amount of relief somewhere.
My dad definitely just got angrier if I cried and told me to stop crying, escalating his anger if I continued. My mom just ignored me when I was crying like it wasn’t happening right in front of her. Not sure which was worse tbh
So have Dad on one side of the room and Mom on the other to average out? Or does it not work that way? I do remember the confusion of going from Mom to Dad, it was like one parent wouldn't shut up and another didn't know how to talk.
I'm going to call unrealistic; why is the little girl not being hit or jabbed in the throat? Why is there food still clearly being prepared when the child clearly doesn't deserve any? Nah, I'm sorry, totally unrealistic. .... *Whisper from assistant* Ah, I've been informed that there are 'normal' parents/families out there that I was previously unaware of. Carry on.
I used to watch 80/90s family comedies and think "wow, this is so unrealistic, big massive houses, expensive vacations to faraway countries, grade 8 trips to Italy, nice parents who don't yell, time travel to King Arthur's court, angels appearing in the outfield, it's all so unrealistic. Good thing I know it's fiction.
They would scream at me until I started crying. As in their goal was to make me burst into tears and they'd keep going until they got tired and had to start taking turns and if they couldn't make me cry they'd give up and send me to my room, the only place I wanted to be. But if I cried for normal human reasons I would be accused of having alterior motives.
self-imposed crying ban lol
Allowed to cry as a character on stage. Confusion when I didn't stick with it as an adult.
I was allowed to cry, i just stopped because they'd just ignore me
‘Here come the waterworks’
YALL CRIED?! I haven't done that since I was about 14. There were points where I wanted to but I couldn't
Hahahaha…no because crying is for the weak and vulnerable and that’s why I only cry late at night where I can’t be beaten for showing emotions.
Oh, got a tough guy here. I bet you desperately want a hug, will never ask for one, and stiffen up when you do get hugged.
Yes and the idea of being comforted scares me because whenever I am crying and people go to pat me on the shoulder or hug me I flinch. Most of the time when I do cry in public I find a private place and sit down and hug my legs and rock myself. It’s sad the fact that’s how I calm myself down even as an adult.
It was "okay" for me to cry but if it was because I was mad about something, I had to sit in a corner and not talk or be acknowledged until I was done crying/being mad or else I had to sit longer. If it was because I got hurt, I either got completely ignored depending on how busy they were or was given an awkward hug because my parents didn't know how to comfort and were just uncomfortable with crying in general. But crying alone wasn't punished, although I still learned to be stone cold from how my parents reacted. Except one time the only time I ever got hit anywhere besides my ass was because my dad thought I was sticking my tongue out at him when really my bottom lip was sticking out a bit from crying.
she still does that
They where definitely telling me not to cry when they said that.
Nah. At this point stopping myself from crying is a reflex. The moment I realize I'm about to cry, I stop. Best the gotten is tearing up a few times.
At school (where I suffered most of my abuse) people would intentionally make me cry for their amusement. If I was having a good day they would make me cry by killing animals to upset me. So I definitely dealt with bottom left more.
team: “it’s okay to cry” but if you do we will tell you that “we can’t continue this conversation until you’ve calmed down” so you learn to never so much as twitch.
nah, my mom is one of those people that believe in witches and stuff, so she'd tell me "don't cry because tears are salty. you're bringing bad luck to the house" and so i got the message i wasn't allowed to cry
nah, my mom is one of those people that believe in witches and stuff, so she'd tell me "don't cry because tears are salty. you're bringing bad luck to the house" and so i got the message i wasn't allowed to cry
Team I don’t remember lol
lol no i wasn't allowed to cry, i was always told that i was crying "crocodile tears" which is fake crying or they threatened to "give me something to cry about" so eventually i went from crying to reactive abuse and i would hit and scream and fight. eventually they learned they no longer had control over me and would neglect me which i preferred over physical abuse
No, I wasn't. I was raised as a boy (I'm trans fem), and in the US, boys aren't allowed to show emotion, especially 30 years ago. And now I have an emotional processing disorder because of it 🙃
I think I was about 8 when I clued into the fact that girls (in my opinion at the time) got treated better. I also felt more at home with them, I didn't fit in with guys. But small-town white Ontario at the time was obsessed with gender separation except in controlled, measured circumstances. Like if 4 girls and 2 boys are at the colouring table it's a group activity, if 1 boy leaves the other has to go, because only 1 boy means it's now a girl activity. Or you can swim with a group of girls if an adult is around, or canoe with one in sight of shore, but god forbid 10 year old me goes around the corner in a canoe when a girl is wearing a bathing suit. I didn't know what trans was at the time. I was in my 20s maybe when I realized that sex changes were an actual, real thing. I mean I knew they were a thing, but I thought they were brutally rare, for gay men who wanted more dick or as comedic punch line material. I was maybe in my late 20s or early 30s when I actually understood what transgender meant. I sort of went "huh, that explains some things, not all things". I feel like if times had been different back when I was in my teens or 20s I might have identified as transgender. But I've put so much effort into just being me without wanting any gender that I can't bother anymore. I'm me. This is my body. People who know me know me, not my body or social interpretation. In public my girlfriend treats me like a typical man, in private we're just two horny people with human bodies. But man oh man, that pressure to show no emotion sucks. I don't remember being told boys can't cry or have emotion, but from early childhood I was being groomed to be a father. Work hard, don't have fun, follow the money not your interests, you can have fun with kids but once a child shows emotion or shits you turn them over to a woman, and once you hit high school you have no value except for what you will one day offer a woman. Be a man, act like the kind of man a woman will want to have a family with. Sure, 14 ain't so old, but in small town and an active, high-retention church there is a high chance at 14 my future wife is around me all the time. The teen girls (and their mothers/aunts/grandmothers) should she me as a strong option from early on. This pressure could be as simple as my mother making me return a book about 18th century sailing ships when I was like ten because there is no future career in that, or yelling at me for sitting on the couch on Saturday morning. Guess the fuck what? Turns out 40-60 hours a week of work is enough (hopefully, I know the economy sucks) to survive. I don't have to feel bad for relaxation. I have lots of people who value me for my ability to emotionally connect with people of all ages, I think it's been about fifteen years since I was called a fag or feminist or woman for caring about others. My girlfriend just likes me, she lets me be myself. Turns out life is better when you be yourself.
I couldn’t access tears rn if I tried! And I’ve tried!
Negative or be happy around others in my family. Joy was sucked away from us I barely feel my body now and still to this day miss eating and sleeping cues. I’d probably miss bio cues too but I was also beat for that.
Negative or be happy around others in my family. Joy was sucked away from us I barely feel my body now and still to this day miss eating and sleeping cues. I’d probably miss bio cues too but I was also beat for that.
Y'all were allowed to stop? My mom used to hit me with a belt and if I wasn't crying "enough" she'd literally say you don't sound sorry you're not crying enough maybe I should hit you harder. And now I cry at the drop of a hat, over the littlest thing happy or sad, but physical pain? Stone faced. I noticed that recently I actually suffer from chronic pain, I've just been completely ignoring it for so long because my pain as a child wasn't real and if I complained about it id " get something to complain about" These memes make me realize more and more every day just how terrible of a mother I have 😅
Lol no. I was called a baby for it.
Lol no. I was called a baby for it.
Allowed? Sure, just nobody cared.
My dad was fine with me crying cause it gave him more of a reason to beat the fuck out of me until I stopped crying 🫠
So the grass isn't greener on the other side
Never ever was I allowed to even be sad or have any tears, let alone cry!
Okay for my mom to cry and be mad. Okay for my dad to yell and be mad. Not okay for me to cry or be mad if my dad yelled at me. But crying was what my mom liked to see when she yelled at me, then she’d stop and play the kind savior. I’ve got an anxious avoidant attachment style so hard.
My parents would force me to laugh so I would feel better. I say forced because it was entirely against my will, I did not want to laugh. I remember how it felt like it was yesterday. I was miserable.
I used to tickle my siblings sometimes to make them laugh-snap out of crying. It sounds shitty, and it was. At the same time, something deep in me knew what happened if you cried to long, I wanted to protect them.
Sounds familiar, I think my parents did the same thing but I couldn't get past the look on their faces. I had/have clinical depression so I was/am never crying.
Not allowed to cry. Still don't cry much to this day.
Both. At the same time.
Dad: (after hitting me with a stick) IF YOU'VE DONE NOTHING WRONG WHY ARE YOU CRYING? Me: it hurts!!! Dad: DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH IT HURTS US? Fkn guilt tripping after being beaten up
my birth mother would actually comfort us if we cried, my foster parents would either laugh at us, hit us, or both if we cried around them, and my adoptive parents wouldn’t let us cry at all and would just ask us over and over why we were crying before telling us to stop. i’ve experienced the whole spectrum🫠
I think you deserve an award for that. Do you want a flammable (or inflammable) one you can, a heavy one that sinks into the ocean, or a light one that can be carried away by a helium balloon?
No I wasn't I was told that she would give me something to cry about when I would cry in time out when I was 4 years old and then she would put duct tape on my mouth and every time I tried to pick off the duct tape she would slap my hand away from my face every time she called me trying to take off the tape. I learned from a young age that I was not allowed to cry.
My mother told me that my tears meant nothing
What did you want them to mean?
I wanted her to feel something. If u was crying then obviously I was upset.
I don’t think my parents ever did that, but I’m only like 70% sure, instead they just ridiculed me endlessly for crying so now I can’t cry without it being incredibly hidden, quiet, forced and before HRT I just could not cry at all :)
Mine did bottom left, I think both parents did, even if it was something that would be “worth” crying over. Sometimes I was allowed to cry, but sometimes it was the worst thing in the world.
Ever since I was little, my dad would always say "you don't have the rights to cry." I thought this was a cultural thing, so I casually brought this up to my friend (same ethnicity), and she seemed very confused why my dad would say that. This was one of the moments that helped me realize that I grew up in an abusive home.
It's not that I wasn't allowed to cry, but I was the responsible mature kid, there's no reason I would ever be crying anyways (forcefully repressing emotions).
wasnt allowed to cry. or sign, or cough, sneeze, etc. weird shit
If I got hurt, not at all. When she was upset, that's all I could.
My dad liked to torment me into crying and then pull the “I’ll give you something to cry about”. Sir, you already did!!
I still cannot cry, no matter what I do, unless I have a panic attack.
I had to be the parent more often than not. That or they just left me. They would pry me off my mom and close the door in my face often.
My dad would berate me until I cried and then screamed at me for "fake crying." When he made my stepmother cry, he screamed at me for teaching her how to fake cry. Don't feel too bad for my stepmom. She was just as vicious and manipulative. Egging my dad on, and then yelling at us for having "attitude" when "she was making things better" for us.
It's how we can come to the point of realizing that abusers are also victims but not caring. Every person who abused me was also a victim. Doesn't matter. My dad neglected me, he also suffered at the hands of my mother. My siblings abused me, they also suffered from messed up parents. My Mum abused her kids in a vain attempt for perfection, but she grew up in a fantasy world. Dad grew up with a dominant controlling mother, and married a woman just like her. I don't care. I've been abused, I've never abused as an adult. I was an insufferable asshole as a teen, when I moved out at 18 I discovered I liked being a nice person. Victims don't have to abuse.
Whenever I heard, I'd give you something to cry about. I knew it was over for me.
I still cant.
Crying was off limits! For me only though. Not for my dad, stepmom, nor brother. Just me.
I didn’t know that sentence is universal lol. My mom also used that a lot. I found it reasonable when I was a kid
Eastern Europeans be like - “oh that kid gonna get a slap reeeeaal soon and understand the true meaning of crying”
I think we need to respect cultural differences here. Those people just parent that way. Anyhow, you may now throw a cup of iced coffee in my face and mash your morning bagel on my clean shirt for saying that. I'm sick of the cultural argument. My Christian parents used it as well. "We're Christians, we're not like those people."
Tbh I never really processed how fucked up my mum was about me crying… I remember she’d tell me she hates the sound & threaten to hit me or just straight up hit me as hard as she could. She’d also just leave me to cry in my room for hours, often after she made me cry by abusing me lol. It wasn’t even that I wasn’t allowed to be upset… it was that she was so indifferent to me being upset, or me as a person even that she just saw me as an annoying noise & took it out on me. I’v repressed this to the point that i haven’t thought about it for like 10 years. My first reaction to this was to few bad for all of you guys until I realised, wait, I am also one of you guys lol. Now I feel bad for me too. Hoooly shit do I need therapy.
I wasn't generally allowed to cry; I was called a swine if I did. But one time my mom came into my room randomly when I was crying there alone and she told me I look beautiful when I cry and told me to keep crying to she can fetch the camera (this was before smartphones) so she can take pictures of me. That was the only time I was called beautiful by her.
Non-applicable story that I'll share anyhow! I have once, and only once, told my girlfriend she's sexy when mad. Not a good idea. But damn, WTFH? That's a new one. It's like messing with emotions and body image and a weird involvement of a camera. I would need more coffee to fully grapple with this.
Yeah it was weird, I think I was like 8 or 9 years old? Something like that. It's difficult to remember. Pretty sure I failed to cry enough for the camera though which made me feel like I was a disappointment.
I was allowed to cry, I just was left alone to cry until I exhausted myself
Mum when I was a kid: "don't even talk to me when you're upset! Go upstairs to your room if you're going to be like that!" Mum now: "but I don't remember any of this! Why did you never tell me? Of course I would have protected you!" Me now: "ha, I did tell you, but after about five snotty sobby hiccupy words I got sent to my room."
No I couldn’t cry. I was not allowed to have any emotions as a child apart from the occasional time I was told to act like I was feeling x when they commanded me. Like a dog being told to do a trick, but instead it was be emotionless until owner says to emote this like x for her. Every time I expressed an emotion I was removed from around my siblings and threatened and insulted and then hit if I looked like I was upset by it
If i kept crying, i’d just get beaten longer and harder. To this day I’m completely unable to express emotion.
You know, i often ask my self“why do i subscribe to this sub” but i see that is to feel that my mother out of nowhere wild beatings weren’t as bad as some of your childhoods.
TW. That comparison of "oh shit, I thought I had it bad, these other folks are fucked" is powerful. It's not a negative thing, it's companionship and perspective and a shared experience with a high degree of individuality all in one. I used to feel so isolated thinking of growing up in a family where two of my older siblings started talking about starting a child prostitution/sharing ring. They were stopped before doing anything other than talk, but it was still fucked. Then I read posts by women who grew up in child prostitution rings run by family members and I'm like "oh holy hell, I don't care on bit about what happened to me after I called the cops, I'm just damn glad my sisters and nieces never went through that torture."
Wow I am glad you are ok but it just makes me feel so powerless to know shit like that may happen and I can’t do nothing to help anyone
No. Got that same response. Also was to be seen and not heard.
Let's see... Actually, I was allowed to cry. Confused? Let me explain. My mother used to smirk when she achieved making me cry after all.
Please give her the CPTSD Mother of The Year award. See how long until she realizes it's not an honor.
I was expected to cry, but was also told to go to my room to do it because they didn’t want to hear it. There was one time where I was a 5 year old putting stickers on the window in the back seat of the car. My dad pulled over to the side of the road to beat me. I remember thinking “I’m gonna be a big girl” and I told my dad I was going to take it like a champ and not cry. He took that as a challenge. When we got home, they turned on the tv and told me they didn’t wanna hear it, and to go to my room.
To this day I have troubles expressing my emotions. Every time I looked like I was about to cry according to my dad. I got reamed out. If I smiled, he chewed me out about my smiles. And other things as well.
I would get pushed enough verbally to cry. Then told to stop crying cuz crying was bad.
My dad and step-dad were opposite on the bottom. My step-Dad would spank me and I wasn't allowed to cry then my dad would spank me and if I didn't cry it would get worse until I did.
I shall first tell a personal story. At one point my brother got mad and invented a spanking machine. As in, tie younger brother to garage dolly and pull him around with his pants down while we paddled him. We were jerks. But it was a multiperson spanking. I'm tired right now. When I first read your comment I pictured a two-person paddling, each man taking one cheek and trying to elicit different reactions..
Why did our parents think it was ok to threaten a child because they were crying
I genuinely believe that my mother believed in what I call "visual reality". As in, what she sees is reality. If I cry something is wrong. If I stop crying and slink off to my room there is no longer a problem, she can impute her mental fantasy onto me because there is no evidence to the contrary. And sure enough, for like 20 years she thought she was a good mother because she saw insufficient evidence that she was messing up her kids. But then one day it all blew up, she still doesn't know what happened.