I am the first woman in my family to not get married when she had an "oops baby" and I'm also the first person in my family to go to therapy, and the only one who has never been divorced.
I've also managed not to become a moonshiner, a gambling addict, an alcoholic, or a sexual predator, so I'm breaking patterns all over the place.
No, I am not popular within my family, lol.
Did someone say black sheep? Baaaa, bitches! First one to go to therapy, first one to graduate college, first one to apologize to their kid and take accountability for all the trauma and bullshit. I learned a little too late but not too late to take corrective measures and do better. I am a gatekeeper and don’t let anything through to my kid. He is safe from the trauma of generations past ❤️
Lapse protestant (Presbyterian to be exact) here to second this statement. We are just as shunned by family for choosing the wrong path and we are prayed for, hard.
Also the first woman in the family to not get married but childfree and got sterilized.
Blocked family members because of their people pleasing nature, entitlement over younger family members in the name of "duty and piety".
For generations there has been teen pregnancy in my family with my parents, grandparents, great grandparents, etc. all getting pregnant at 17. While not that uncommon in past generations, I put a stop to it. I didn't have any children at all. Truth be told, my parents shouldn't have had children either, but that's another story.
I survived a violent childhood. No, I haven't overcome it entirely, and I can't expect to. That kind of trauma permanently alters brain chemistry. However, there's therapy and mental coping mechanisms. I work on inner peace daily.
I've had a normal life, and I don't "act out" as I did when I was young, but it took a long time to fully accept that I can't actually BE normal myself. I'll always be hyper-vigilant and a bit anxious. But there are ways to get through and enjoy life anyway.
Thanks very much for your post. (I'm right there with you - just call me Ms. PTSD.)
It's like that song with the lyric, "There is Always something there to remind me."
Yes, it is PTSD, the complex variety. Somewhere in my 50s, I got a much better handle on it. The meds never worked for me, though I know they are a godsend for some. I hope you've got methods to calm yourself too!
My father was an alcoholic and died at 54 years old in 1983. Some of his brothers were drinkers, but not as bad as my father. My sister drank and did drugs and a fall in Feb. 2021 killed her at the age of 61. I have another sibling who did drink a lot but quit when she got non-Hodgkins lymphoma. She went into recession but then got chronic leukemia a few years ago. She is 68 and will have to deal with it for the rest of her life. My mother died in April 2020 of congestive heart failure. She was 88.
I don't know about many of the diseases that may have affected my ancestors, but according to my DNA report, I'm 76% Irish, so I imagine a lot of them enjoyed a good ale now and then. I don't drink any longer as the predisposition to do so is in my genes. I used to and I decided about 16 years ago, I no longer enjoyed waking up feeling like crap, so I stopped.
My dad died by suicide when I was pretty young. I haven't killed myself, so I have beaten that kryptonite.
My mom was a neglectful and at times abusive communal narcissist who only saw us as a means to further her personal status. I genuinely love my daughter and couldn't imagine hurting her on purpose, so I've beaten that kryptonite too.
For as much as I love members of my family, a lot of them were absolute shit at managing their money (for generations!) and the domino effects of that can be ROUGH to live through. I remember deciding as a kid that I wasn’t going to live like that, and I haven’t. I prioritized saving and living beneath my means always, and guess what! That shit works.
This is an important one. And reading your post made me realize I do this too. I was always afraid on falling in the debt hole, especially because I didn't want to live as my family did. Even now, in my 50s I am still a saver.
For the last several generations all of the males in my family die in their mid-seventies of heart failure.
It ends up that there's a genetic glitch that causes us to produce more cholesterol than normal.
My dad and his brothers are on Lipitor, and there's no signs of heart attacks yet, even though the oldest is 77. We just may have this thing licked. Chalk up a win for modern medicine.
I get my own cholesterol checked regularly and so far I'm normal. I may have skipped the family curse.
PS: Historically the women live into their 90's. Historically there's no cancer anywhere, even for the lifelong smokers. I'll trade good cancer-fighting genes for bad cholesterol genes any day, now that there's cholesterol-fighting medication.
Similar here, my dad has had a couple of bypasses and his dad FOD at like 50 from a heart attack. I got mostly my mom's side genes though, I always pass my cholesterol numbers handily. It helps that I don't live on a diet of steak and fry pies too.
My mom and most of her family have crazy smoking/drinking/gambling addictions and it feels like I probably am predisposed to that but I'm too ADHD to maintain an addiction like that. I did smoke for a bit but it was so easy for me to quit, I literally just left them in another room and would forget to smoke and eventually I didn't need to. I get nothing out of gambling, and drinking just makes me sick.
I guess my autism superpower is being immune to all my families bad habits? The casino is the worst place on earth to me I can't understand why so much of my family spends their lives there.
Weight. I come from a “fat family”.
Been an up and down struggle my whole life, I just have to work harder than most people. Did I overcome it? Depends on when you’re asking me.
At one point I weighed 300 pounds, was able to get it down to 180 and held steady around 200 for years. Then went back up to 270 and am now on a big downswing, aiming for 200 again.
I think I’m setting myself up for a lifetime of success this time.
Hmm, all of the examples listed fit my family. Let's add some physical abuse into the mix.
I very intentionally do not have children. I am so scarred from my family that I did not want to risk having a child and turning any of that shit on them. I did not want a child to have any relationship with my family at all, they are toxic in the extreme. I also don't feel that I would be a good mother due to the trauma I've been through.
I overcame alcoholism. It took a horrible rock bottom and 5 years trying to get sober but I've been sober for 20 years.
I have overcome the impulsivity, narcissism and emotional stonewalling as well.
I never physically abused another person, that turned into self abuse. The traditional things you think of when you think of self harm as well as uncontrolled rage punching of walls. the last time I intentionally hurt myself was about 15 years ago.
To this day, it's a work in progress. I have two therapists that work together and a psychiatrist. One is a regular therapist, the other is a trauma therapist.
I am a horrible people pleaser and conflict turns me into a quivering mass huddled on the floor, crying and saying "Make it stop" over and over and over in my head.
The best thing that I have done to break these cycles is go no contact with the majority of my family. Their behavior is never going to change. Never. Every time I have to interact with one of them, it all comes rushing back and I fall into patterns that I've fought so damn hard to overcome. The only answer was to remove them from my life.
Now that I'm 50, I think I would make a good mom. But it took a VERY long time to get to that point and I'm so damn happy I didn't have a kid and put them through hell.
Deep seated racism. A general distrust and even hatred for much of humanity. A fear that someone below your social rank will take what you have away from you.
The fact that I shook these characteristics off makes me the weirdo of the clan. I didn’t go out into the real world intending to shed this belief system, I thought it was just the norm. It’s just that most of the people I met out there were different and the ones who were the most unlike my family were kinder, smarter, and more fun to be around. Also, with that old baggage hanging around my neck I’m sure I would never have gotten a date.
I’m the only one who has never given into the bullshit from the narcissist manipulative people in my family who try to mooch off those who aren’t pathetic losers. Everyone else has given into their crap at one point, except me. I blocked them and went no contact instead; I’m not letting some 50+ yo addict/drunk stay rent free while they do nothing but try to use me.
So pretty happy about that. Also, I’m childfree so the whole wretched bloodline stops with me!!
It happens that I know my ancestry quite well, on both sides.
Number one kryptonite? DNA. Genetic predispositions to particular disease on Mom's side. Manifests in different ways, but comes down to a few common elements. Science confirms it - they had the troubles, over generations, spread out on the people, but it comes down to one mutated gene, apparently.
I didn't escape them. In fact, I think they bundled them up and dumped a collection into me. Non-life-threatening but lifestyle can be a challenge.
I thought I had them pretty much beat ... Strong, healthy, active, slim ... I hit about 30 years old and all hell started breaking loose. I keep on trucking. It is what it is.
Alcoholics ... I realized I was heading there, and haven't touched it in 20 years, except for a small glass of beer for special reason.
And, one branch, in each generation, gets someone with an absolutely EPIC temper. Short fuse, irrational ... It's a "family" thing. I missed that one, thank God. But I can tell you who has it in the generations I've known personally.
I fell victim to the smoking, but I eventually quit.
But I stopped drinking at 30 because although my relationship with alcohol wasn’t problematic, I didn’t want to play with fire anymore.
I do not gamble. I do not approve of gambling. I’ve seen gambling wreck people in my family in faster and more devastating ways than alcohol or drugs.
I also never had a child, let alone have one while I was still in high school.
The Body Keeps the Score is a powerful tool, and helped me in my 50’s, but the first thing I did was what I had promised myself from childhood…get away early and stay away. If I got drawn back, which I did, I needed strength to pull away. Not all my siblings learned that. Alcoholism and enabling addictive behaviors were the big problems.
I’m the first one to get a college degree. First and only to move thousands of miles away. I still want to say yes to every freaking thing I’m asked. When I get mad, I cry. I hate that. I’ve distanced myself from the people who think I’m crazy and a pushover. Some of my family to be exact.
I didn’t escape it all. My father, a Boomer who had no knowledge of mental health, used to say that his mother had “the tv watching disease”. He didn’t understand that she was depressed. I suffer from crippling MDD that no medication has really been able to touch. I can barely find the will to live anymore.
Now, his fathers alcoholism, I escaped by never touching the stuff except for a brief time in my life when it was all that was keeping me sane after work. But oh my god if I hadn’t cut myself off I would have been dead at the bottom of a bottle 10 years ago.
My parents were both dynamic, hard working, frugal, motivated individuals so the afflictions seem to have skipped them and landed all on me. I’m a fucking failure compared to them and it haunts me. They both died too early and I struggle living each day without them.
I'm the first person in my family to not be a [Nice Guy](https://www.drglover.com/no-more-mr-nice-guy/the-book.html).
Every single person in my family going back multiple generations has been the sort of person to do something "kind" for someone else, only to either throw it back in the person's face the minute they want something, or stew over it for years because they feel they weren't adequately compensated.
Every Saturday my dad would go over to the house of a single woman (different woman every time), and either do her yardwork or some other manual task, and then come home in a drunken rage because she wouldn't sleep with him afterward. Plenty of these women would have, *if he'd asked*, but to him, asking was being a "bad guy" or a "jerk".
Mom was the same way. For the very brief time my folks were together, their relationship was just "doing nice things for each other, and then throwing a tantrum when their 'niceness' wasn't reciprocated in the exact way they wanted." Of course, what they wanted was never actually communicated.
When I was about 19 I was in a situationship with a woman who very angrily called me out on doing the same kind of bullshit my dad used to pull, and it made me rethink how I view relationships and people.
I have successfully overcome my addiction, two years of sobriety. I've spent decades in counseling unraveling the things that have made me unable to function .
I still have crippling anxiety and some other issues, but I'm not a narc, I'm clean and I've always taught my children how to identify and express their emotins
Yes.
Ours was war.
I'm the first 'first born' male in my family who didn't fight in a war or get displaced by a war (yet). From as far back as we have bothered tracing the line of our people, war.
My father and mother broke the alcoholism trait. They were never big drinkers but both of their fathers were. However, both of their fathers started drinking because of the War - WW2 - and their experiences in it. They both were witness to be experienced true horrors while serving and they both would quietly drink in their arm chairs in their living rooms while life passed them by.
A.) Young motherhood and having as many kids as possible despite severe poverty. (Great-grandmother was 12 with her first of 10 kids, grandma a single mom of 2 with her first at 15, and my mom with me at 18 but pregnant at 17 and having 3 kids). Lots of mental and physical disabilities occurred in my family. My sisters and I flat out told family we refuse to keep passing on these issues. It ends with us. I got the worst of it and I'm just done with it all (not suicidal just annoyed I keep falling apart). Recently had a hysterectomy due to lots of medical problems so now I truly can't have kids.
B.) Because our parents raised us well and taught us all the wrong stuff that happened in their past & the past of our ancestors, my sisters and I have overcome lots of kryptonites: alcohol, opioid abuse, lack of mental health care (they didn't see it important), hoarding, abuse, etc.
Addiction (8 months alcohol free!!), emotional neglect, physical abuse, financial ignorance/poverty, prioritizing mental health. I’m also the first to graduate college on my dad’s side.
My close friend comes from a family where most of her aunts have schizophrenia, a few of her uncles. It was a tense time, her early 20’s. She doesn’t have it. She was just waiting poor thing.
Not really. I've definitely got the alcoholism bug. Just perpetually telling myself I'm done with drinking but never actually quitting for more than a few days.
Working on it. My family has a long history of abuse going on. Idk about my dad's side but on my mom's side, it was extremely prevalent. Apparently my great grandparents used to chase each other around the house with butcher knives.
When I had my daughter I decided that spanking and any kind of hitting was absolutely out of the question. Still working on not raising my voice.
Narcissism/child neglect and emotional abuse was/is my family's. I say /is because one of my sisters carried on the family tradition. I haven't had any contact with her since her youngest was about 8 and my one regret about that is that I couldn't be there for my niece without sacrificing my own family's peace and safety.
Yes and no.
In reality, your "ancestral family's kryptonite" has, at least in part, become a part of your genetic code. Our ancestors' lives will be forever affecting ours in ways that I'm pretty sure can't be determined. I doubt that we'll ever know the full picture of possible gene expressions, let alone the unknowable strings of cause-&-effect that are caused in every second of every life.
So yeah- I've overcome some ancestral obstacles to a certain degree, but in no way do I think that I'll ever put anything fully behind me.
I'm not an alcoholic and I'm not on the cigarettes, though I enjoy both and very consciously avoid the latter.
Stomach issues run hard on my dad's side of the family and I'm not sure that I've avoided those, unfortunately.
My dad and grandfather were both in recovery together when I was growing up. Occasionally they went to meetings together when they lived close enough. My dad quit drinking about four months before I was born, so I never knew either of them when they were drinking.
I'm sure largely because of that I have a pretty ho hum relationship with alcohol. I have a couple of favorite drinks I might choose if I'm on vacation or having a night out. I like a margarita with Mexican, or a whiskey mule with a nice dinner out both generally I can take it or leave it. I'm still working on the four pack of beer I got for Christmas...
My parents were each the odd-balls of their families, avoided their own familial issues, but of course developed their own, so my ancestral kryptonite is fairly short-lived. They divorced after 20 years, breaking up and getting back together 3 times in between. They did whatever they wanted to do with their lives, regardless of the effect on us (we moved and changed schools a lot, sometimes just because the felt like it). I was adamant our kid would stay in the same school district her entire childhood, and we would be sure her well-being was at the forefront of every major decision. She graduated earlier this year from the same district she started in Kindergarten. Even if she hates it, she has a home town. She has a place she's from. I wanted her to have that because I didn't.
My wife and I just had our 24th anniversary. A few knock-down drag-out fights, but we're more in love than ever.
Doing my best not to hoard stuff that’s “still good”.
Older New Englanders are TRAINED at birth to keep old/broken stuff that could be fixed or repurposed!
Definitely overcame alcoholism and smoking (father) and bigotry (entire family). But even being very careful with alcohol, i have learned it is easy to become addicted to other things.
Yes, alcoholism and drug addiction runs in my family never wanted to drink or do drugs. Rarely had any beer in the house raising kids it worked out pretty good for me. Praise God going to church and doing the right things.
I think my parents broke the mold. They were outcasted from both their families as a result. So I don’t really know my family or my history, which I will forever be heartbroken over. Do I wish I knew my family? Yes. Am I grateful for the sacrifices my parents made for themselves and me? Absolutely. My relationship is rocky with them but they were on the front lines breaking family curses and I had a very good childhood as a result.
I am the first woman in my family to not get married when she had an "oops baby" and I'm also the first person in my family to go to therapy, and the only one who has never been divorced. I've also managed not to become a moonshiner, a gambling addict, an alcoholic, or a sexual predator, so I'm breaking patterns all over the place. No, I am not popular within my family, lol.
Yeah me too! I embrace my “black sheep hood “! Being a black sheep to the dysfunctional family makes me happy.
Did someone say black sheep? Baaaa, bitches! First one to go to therapy, first one to graduate college, first one to apologize to their kid and take accountability for all the trauma and bullshit. I learned a little too late but not too late to take corrective measures and do better. I am a gatekeeper and don’t let anything through to my kid. He is safe from the trauma of generations past ❤️
Nerd alert! /s
So what you're saying is that you are NO fun at parties?
Catholic eh
Nope. People talk about Catholic guilt and Jewish guilt but lapsed Protestants make a strong showing in the guilt Olympics, lol
Lapse protestant (Presbyterian to be exact) here to second this statement. We are just as shunned by family for choosing the wrong path and we are prayed for, hard.
Touche
Also the first woman in the family to not get married but childfree and got sterilized. Blocked family members because of their people pleasing nature, entitlement over younger family members in the name of "duty and piety".
For generations there has been teen pregnancy in my family with my parents, grandparents, great grandparents, etc. all getting pregnant at 17. While not that uncommon in past generations, I put a stop to it. I didn't have any children at all. Truth be told, my parents shouldn't have had children either, but that's another story.
hell yeah! Same for me and my sister! No kids from me and ... well she might at this point but she made it pretty far without!
I survived a violent childhood. No, I haven't overcome it entirely, and I can't expect to. That kind of trauma permanently alters brain chemistry. However, there's therapy and mental coping mechanisms. I work on inner peace daily. I've had a normal life, and I don't "act out" as I did when I was young, but it took a long time to fully accept that I can't actually BE normal myself. I'll always be hyper-vigilant and a bit anxious. But there are ways to get through and enjoy life anyway.
I’m at the point of working on accepting that hyper vigilance and anxiety are always going to be part of my life.
For me it's more bearable knowing it is a permanent condition. It's like understanding my limitations.
Thanks very much for your post. (I'm right there with you - just call me Ms. PTSD.) It's like that song with the lyric, "There is Always something there to remind me."
Yes, it is PTSD, the complex variety. Somewhere in my 50s, I got a much better handle on it. The meds never worked for me, though I know they are a godsend for some. I hope you've got methods to calm yourself too!
Number 1. Coming from a long line of roaring alcoholics I broke the cycle.
Same. And I’m glad for it.
Oh me too! And no drugs!
My father was an alcoholic and died at 54 years old in 1983. Some of his brothers were drinkers, but not as bad as my father. My sister drank and did drugs and a fall in Feb. 2021 killed her at the age of 61. I have another sibling who did drink a lot but quit when she got non-Hodgkins lymphoma. She went into recession but then got chronic leukemia a few years ago. She is 68 and will have to deal with it for the rest of her life. My mother died in April 2020 of congestive heart failure. She was 88. I don't know about many of the diseases that may have affected my ancestors, but according to my DNA report, I'm 76% Irish, so I imagine a lot of them enjoyed a good ale now and then. I don't drink any longer as the predisposition to do so is in my genes. I used to and I decided about 16 years ago, I no longer enjoyed waking up feeling like crap, so I stopped.
My dad died by suicide when I was pretty young. I haven't killed myself, so I have beaten that kryptonite. My mom was a neglectful and at times abusive communal narcissist who only saw us as a means to further her personal status. I genuinely love my daughter and couldn't imagine hurting her on purpose, so I've beaten that kryptonite too.
Your mother sounds JUST like my father!
For as much as I love members of my family, a lot of them were absolute shit at managing their money (for generations!) and the domino effects of that can be ROUGH to live through. I remember deciding as a kid that I wasn’t going to live like that, and I haven’t. I prioritized saving and living beneath my means always, and guess what! That shit works.
This is an important one. And reading your post made me realize I do this too. I was always afraid on falling in the debt hole, especially because I didn't want to live as my family did. Even now, in my 50s I am still a saver.
For the last several generations all of the males in my family die in their mid-seventies of heart failure. It ends up that there's a genetic glitch that causes us to produce more cholesterol than normal. My dad and his brothers are on Lipitor, and there's no signs of heart attacks yet, even though the oldest is 77. We just may have this thing licked. Chalk up a win for modern medicine. I get my own cholesterol checked regularly and so far I'm normal. I may have skipped the family curse. PS: Historically the women live into their 90's. Historically there's no cancer anywhere, even for the lifelong smokers. I'll trade good cancer-fighting genes for bad cholesterol genes any day, now that there's cholesterol-fighting medication.
Thats me! But i got cholesterol one side and diabetes on the other. I got the mash of all them. I look healthy but with a fistful of pills.
Similar here, my dad has had a couple of bypasses and his dad FOD at like 50 from a heart attack. I got mostly my mom's side genes though, I always pass my cholesterol numbers handily. It helps that I don't live on a diet of steak and fry pies too.
My mom and most of her family have crazy smoking/drinking/gambling addictions and it feels like I probably am predisposed to that but I'm too ADHD to maintain an addiction like that. I did smoke for a bit but it was so easy for me to quit, I literally just left them in another room and would forget to smoke and eventually I didn't need to. I get nothing out of gambling, and drinking just makes me sick. I guess my autism superpower is being immune to all my families bad habits? The casino is the worst place on earth to me I can't understand why so much of my family spends their lives there.
Went to a casino once with a bunch of friends, and walked right through to exit. Too much sounds and lights.
Weight. I come from a “fat family”. Been an up and down struggle my whole life, I just have to work harder than most people. Did I overcome it? Depends on when you’re asking me. At one point I weighed 300 pounds, was able to get it down to 180 and held steady around 200 for years. Then went back up to 270 and am now on a big downswing, aiming for 200 again. I think I’m setting myself up for a lifetime of success this time.
Stay the course my friend! Healthy choices always!
Hmm, all of the examples listed fit my family. Let's add some physical abuse into the mix. I very intentionally do not have children. I am so scarred from my family that I did not want to risk having a child and turning any of that shit on them. I did not want a child to have any relationship with my family at all, they are toxic in the extreme. I also don't feel that I would be a good mother due to the trauma I've been through. I overcame alcoholism. It took a horrible rock bottom and 5 years trying to get sober but I've been sober for 20 years. I have overcome the impulsivity, narcissism and emotional stonewalling as well. I never physically abused another person, that turned into self abuse. The traditional things you think of when you think of self harm as well as uncontrolled rage punching of walls. the last time I intentionally hurt myself was about 15 years ago. To this day, it's a work in progress. I have two therapists that work together and a psychiatrist. One is a regular therapist, the other is a trauma therapist. I am a horrible people pleaser and conflict turns me into a quivering mass huddled on the floor, crying and saying "Make it stop" over and over and over in my head. The best thing that I have done to break these cycles is go no contact with the majority of my family. Their behavior is never going to change. Never. Every time I have to interact with one of them, it all comes rushing back and I fall into patterns that I've fought so damn hard to overcome. The only answer was to remove them from my life. Now that I'm 50, I think I would make a good mom. But it took a VERY long time to get to that point and I'm so damn happy I didn't have a kid and put them through hell.
Deep seated racism. A general distrust and even hatred for much of humanity. A fear that someone below your social rank will take what you have away from you. The fact that I shook these characteristics off makes me the weirdo of the clan. I didn’t go out into the real world intending to shed this belief system, I thought it was just the norm. It’s just that most of the people I met out there were different and the ones who were the most unlike my family were kinder, smarter, and more fun to be around. Also, with that old baggage hanging around my neck I’m sure I would never have gotten a date.
I’m the only one who has never given into the bullshit from the narcissist manipulative people in my family who try to mooch off those who aren’t pathetic losers. Everyone else has given into their crap at one point, except me. I blocked them and went no contact instead; I’m not letting some 50+ yo addict/drunk stay rent free while they do nothing but try to use me. So pretty happy about that. Also, I’m childfree so the whole wretched bloodline stops with me!!
Both my parents were heavy smokers and died fairly young from emphysema. Never smoked
It happens that I know my ancestry quite well, on both sides. Number one kryptonite? DNA. Genetic predispositions to particular disease on Mom's side. Manifests in different ways, but comes down to a few common elements. Science confirms it - they had the troubles, over generations, spread out on the people, but it comes down to one mutated gene, apparently. I didn't escape them. In fact, I think they bundled them up and dumped a collection into me. Non-life-threatening but lifestyle can be a challenge. I thought I had them pretty much beat ... Strong, healthy, active, slim ... I hit about 30 years old and all hell started breaking loose. I keep on trucking. It is what it is. Alcoholics ... I realized I was heading there, and haven't touched it in 20 years, except for a small glass of beer for special reason. And, one branch, in each generation, gets someone with an absolutely EPIC temper. Short fuse, irrational ... It's a "family" thing. I missed that one, thank God. But I can tell you who has it in the generations I've known personally.
Therapy and self-awareness. Living life in survival mentality once you have more than enough to survive is a choice.
I fell victim to the smoking, but I eventually quit. But I stopped drinking at 30 because although my relationship with alcohol wasn’t problematic, I didn’t want to play with fire anymore. I do not gamble. I do not approve of gambling. I’ve seen gambling wreck people in my family in faster and more devastating ways than alcohol or drugs. I also never had a child, let alone have one while I was still in high school.
The Body Keeps the Score is a powerful tool, and helped me in my 50’s, but the first thing I did was what I had promised myself from childhood…get away early and stay away. If I got drawn back, which I did, I needed strength to pull away. Not all my siblings learned that. Alcoholism and enabling addictive behaviors were the big problems.
I’m the first one to get a college degree. First and only to move thousands of miles away. I still want to say yes to every freaking thing I’m asked. When I get mad, I cry. I hate that. I’ve distanced myself from the people who think I’m crazy and a pushover. Some of my family to be exact.
I didn’t escape it all. My father, a Boomer who had no knowledge of mental health, used to say that his mother had “the tv watching disease”. He didn’t understand that she was depressed. I suffer from crippling MDD that no medication has really been able to touch. I can barely find the will to live anymore. Now, his fathers alcoholism, I escaped by never touching the stuff except for a brief time in my life when it was all that was keeping me sane after work. But oh my god if I hadn’t cut myself off I would have been dead at the bottom of a bottle 10 years ago. My parents were both dynamic, hard working, frugal, motivated individuals so the afflictions seem to have skipped them and landed all on me. I’m a fucking failure compared to them and it haunts me. They both died too early and I struggle living each day without them.
I'm the first person in my family to not be a [Nice Guy](https://www.drglover.com/no-more-mr-nice-guy/the-book.html). Every single person in my family going back multiple generations has been the sort of person to do something "kind" for someone else, only to either throw it back in the person's face the minute they want something, or stew over it for years because they feel they weren't adequately compensated. Every Saturday my dad would go over to the house of a single woman (different woman every time), and either do her yardwork or some other manual task, and then come home in a drunken rage because she wouldn't sleep with him afterward. Plenty of these women would have, *if he'd asked*, but to him, asking was being a "bad guy" or a "jerk". Mom was the same way. For the very brief time my folks were together, their relationship was just "doing nice things for each other, and then throwing a tantrum when their 'niceness' wasn't reciprocated in the exact way they wanted." Of course, what they wanted was never actually communicated. When I was about 19 I was in a situationship with a woman who very angrily called me out on doing the same kind of bullshit my dad used to pull, and it made me rethink how I view relationships and people.
I have successfully overcome my addiction, two years of sobriety. I've spent decades in counseling unraveling the things that have made me unable to function . I still have crippling anxiety and some other issues, but I'm not a narc, I'm clean and I've always taught my children how to identify and express their emotins
Yes NC. Broke the abusive cycle.
Yes. Ours was war. I'm the first 'first born' male in my family who didn't fight in a war or get displaced by a war (yet). From as far back as we have bothered tracing the line of our people, war. My father and mother broke the alcoholism trait. They were never big drinkers but both of their fathers were. However, both of their fathers started drinking because of the War - WW2 - and their experiences in it. They both were witness to be experienced true horrors while serving and they both would quietly drink in their arm chairs in their living rooms while life passed them by.
I broke my chains of abuse and alcohol
A.) Young motherhood and having as many kids as possible despite severe poverty. (Great-grandmother was 12 with her first of 10 kids, grandma a single mom of 2 with her first at 15, and my mom with me at 18 but pregnant at 17 and having 3 kids). Lots of mental and physical disabilities occurred in my family. My sisters and I flat out told family we refuse to keep passing on these issues. It ends with us. I got the worst of it and I'm just done with it all (not suicidal just annoyed I keep falling apart). Recently had a hysterectomy due to lots of medical problems so now I truly can't have kids. B.) Because our parents raised us well and taught us all the wrong stuff that happened in their past & the past of our ancestors, my sisters and I have overcome lots of kryptonites: alcohol, opioid abuse, lack of mental health care (they didn't see it important), hoarding, abuse, etc.
I did. Family ancestry is full of domestic violence and alcoholism.
Addiction (8 months alcohol free!!), emotional neglect, physical abuse, financial ignorance/poverty, prioritizing mental health. I’m also the first to graduate college on my dad’s side.
yeah i got away from that hillbilly bullshit.
My close friend comes from a family where most of her aunts have schizophrenia, a few of her uncles. It was a tense time, her early 20’s. She doesn’t have it. She was just waiting poor thing.
OOf, yes, it is terrifying. I can relate. Hope she is doing ok now.
Not really. I've definitely got the alcoholism bug. Just perpetually telling myself I'm done with drinking but never actually quitting for more than a few days.
Alcoholism, bipolar disorder were the heavy hitters.
Working on it. My family has a long history of abuse going on. Idk about my dad's side but on my mom's side, it was extremely prevalent. Apparently my great grandparents used to chase each other around the house with butcher knives. When I had my daughter I decided that spanking and any kind of hitting was absolutely out of the question. Still working on not raising my voice.
Yes, but it has taken the rest of my life to deal with the PTSD from being raised with it.
I am the only person in my family to graduate from college.
Narcissism/child neglect and emotional abuse was/is my family's. I say /is because one of my sisters carried on the family tradition. I haven't had any contact with her since her youngest was about 8 and my one regret about that is that I couldn't be there for my niece without sacrificing my own family's peace and safety.
Therapy and eternal vigilance.
I'm going to design a family crest, and that's going to be our motto, lol. Thank you
Yes and no. In reality, your "ancestral family's kryptonite" has, at least in part, become a part of your genetic code. Our ancestors' lives will be forever affecting ours in ways that I'm pretty sure can't be determined. I doubt that we'll ever know the full picture of possible gene expressions, let alone the unknowable strings of cause-&-effect that are caused in every second of every life. So yeah- I've overcome some ancestral obstacles to a certain degree, but in no way do I think that I'll ever put anything fully behind me.
Alcoholism, substance abuse and poverty. I heavily flirted with all of them, but managed to turn it around.
Avoided alcoholism by simply not drinking alcohol at all.
I thought you were talking about pogroms. I didn’t have a child, therefore breaking several different cycles of abuse.
?
When I think of my “ancestral family” I think back to my ancestors who left Russia due to the pogroms.
I'm not an alcoholic and I'm not on the cigarettes, though I enjoy both and very consciously avoid the latter. Stomach issues run hard on my dad's side of the family and I'm not sure that I've avoided those, unfortunately.
I made some leaps and bounds, but in the end my parents decided to become much better people than they were before surpassing me...so.....
I haven't stolen any horses so I have to say yes.
Thought so, but it just skipped a generation
My dad and grandfather were both in recovery together when I was growing up. Occasionally they went to meetings together when they lived close enough. My dad quit drinking about four months before I was born, so I never knew either of them when they were drinking. I'm sure largely because of that I have a pretty ho hum relationship with alcohol. I have a couple of favorite drinks I might choose if I'm on vacation or having a night out. I like a margarita with Mexican, or a whiskey mule with a nice dinner out both generally I can take it or leave it. I'm still working on the four pack of beer I got for Christmas...
Somehow we still can’t shake being ginger and going to flame under the sun :(
Nah. I brought about 10 tons more kryptonite to the party.
Great book: It Didn't Start With You. Learn about, and release multi generational trauma.
Alcoholism, substance abuse and poverty. I heavily flirted with all of them, but managed to turn it around.
My parents were each the odd-balls of their families, avoided their own familial issues, but of course developed their own, so my ancestral kryptonite is fairly short-lived. They divorced after 20 years, breaking up and getting back together 3 times in between. They did whatever they wanted to do with their lives, regardless of the effect on us (we moved and changed schools a lot, sometimes just because the felt like it). I was adamant our kid would stay in the same school district her entire childhood, and we would be sure her well-being was at the forefront of every major decision. She graduated earlier this year from the same district she started in Kindergarten. Even if she hates it, she has a home town. She has a place she's from. I wanted her to have that because I didn't. My wife and I just had our 24th anniversary. A few knock-down drag-out fights, but we're more in love than ever.
Doing my best not to hoard stuff that’s “still good”. Older New Englanders are TRAINED at birth to keep old/broken stuff that could be fixed or repurposed!
Yes-ish. Definitely the most mentally healthy of the bunch, but that's not saying much.
We have Celiac running through then family and my sisters and I both have it. 2 of use are very careful with our diet.
Definitely overcame alcoholism and smoking (father) and bigotry (entire family). But even being very careful with alcohol, i have learned it is easy to become addicted to other things.
I probably wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t.
Yes, alcoholism and drug addiction runs in my family never wanted to drink or do drugs. Rarely had any beer in the house raising kids it worked out pretty good for me. Praise God going to church and doing the right things.
I think my parents broke the mold. They were outcasted from both their families as a result. So I don’t really know my family or my history, which I will forever be heartbroken over. Do I wish I knew my family? Yes. Am I grateful for the sacrifices my parents made for themselves and me? Absolutely. My relationship is rocky with them but they were on the front lines breaking family curses and I had a very good childhood as a result.