yes both parents...

I've never held my parents responsible....it's in the genes and they sure didn't pick theirs!! lol

there have been some rough patches where i had no communication with them whatsoever. mom longest was 6 months dad got 2 years +

now all is well, mom and i are really close and dad is there to laugh at/with.

i chose not to communicate with them.

Both of my parents are mentally ill. My father was bp and anxiety. My mother a martyr and codependent. The best I can say is for a short while my father sought treatment. His behavior did improve but by then it was too late. I was already 15 and hated both my parents for everything. My mom I hate more than my dad. She didn't protect us, she didn't want us, it was all about keeping him. To this very day she will deny events that even my father says happened. I do not associate with my family because we are all mentally ill and cannot maintain healthy boundaries. When we used to get together they would all revert back to their "assigned" place within the family hierarchy. I am the only one who continues to seek treatment. I just can't deal with them.

It has effected my life. I purposefully won't do somethings because "I'm not my mother" . Also I am pretty sure my borderline personality is a direct result of the abuse and neglect I lived through. Do I blame them, yes I do. There was no need to keep us if they didn't want us. I paid for the sin of being born.

My father is mentally ill and the king of misinterpretation. If I look at him the wrong way "What's that look for" He snaps at me alot and being mentally ill myself it is hard for us to get a long. My mother no longer talks as much to me because he always says she's taking my side all the time. I don't think there should be a side just opinions. After so many years of it my mom gave up and just doesn't have any conversations that involve an opinion about my dad. They take good care of my daughter but it takes a lot of work to stay healthy minded. I'm trying to work on myself and not let my dad's problem become my own. I love my family we are dysfunctional but non the less a family. They are not responsilbe for my mental illness. I'm sure of one thing there is only one person responsible for keeping my illness in line........ ME.

Both my parents touched me in inappropriate places..my Dad when I was about 9 and my Mom when I was about 17 there was other stuff too...emotional and physical abuse. I don't blame them as they obviously had problems but society and the community I grew up in was just not ready to deal with what happened to me so I don't as lou said drop the ball at their door. My sister went through similiar things but she ran away at 15. I didn't have that option. I figure it was more up to the community (church members,minister, teachers etc...) to help us but everything was swept under the rug back then. My siblings offered to have me live with them when I was a teen but I didn't take them up on it.

I think it is my responsibility to do something about it now even if it happened when I was a child/teen. It is normal to feel anger and blame is anger but if you let it consume you then you are letting yourself be abused all over again. I tend to oscillate between anger and acceptance depending on the day as I am dealing with my mother's death at easter and the break-up of my marriage. I think this is normal too although it feels awful at times...the anger part.

no, one grandmother. Mom dead and dad schizophrenic

My family had a very negative view of mental illness before I got sick. I have a cousin with schizophrenia and the family would complain about him and make fun of him behind his back...mostly siblings did this. My parents would listen to all of this and not say a word. Occasionally my parents would talk about it in front of me and wonder what happened to him..only my mom really "got" that it was an illness and was supportive of him as least in front of me not my brothers and sisters.

One of my brothers doesn't believe in mental illness at all or believe in psychology. He thinks the mentally ill are evil and he told me to drink alcohol to take care of my problems like he does. I have seen him fairly paranoid at times and his son definitely has some sort of mental/emotional disorder. Don't know what is going to happen to him when my brother and sil die as he is 30 and lives with them. Can't hold a job. Has never had friends. Failed out of school etc.... It is a painful situation to see when so much could be done for him.

When I got sick I had to overcome huge obstacles of feeling unworthy and useless because of the attitudes I was raised with. I thought I had comitted the ultimate sin against my family. I looked down on myself they way they would. It took many years and a marriage before I learnt to value myself and I still have problems with self-defeating behaviour from time to time.

My mother was the only one in the family there for me and although she told me my siblings loved me and would support me after she got very ill it wasn't the case. The entire family disowned me except for my sister who ran away (they disowned her 40 years ago). It all came to a head for me when my mother died this year and they tried to hide it from me (I found out through a friend). I didn't go to the funeral as they told me they didn't want me there. This was most upsetting but is prbably the last hurtful thing they can do to me so in a way it is a blessing...I don't have to be afraid anymore.

Now I get the occasional harassing phone call from them and last year I discovered "someone" had thrown mud on my Dad's tomb stone (none of the other headstones in the cemetary had been touched) as well as breaking a few night lights put out around his grave.

I just laugh at them now when they try to bring me down.

To answer the ? how did I get along with them . Growing up my mother was for the most part very hard to get along with . By the age of 5 I knew more about life than any child ever should at that age and she screamed at me all the time. My father chose not to come home and instead worked most of the time I am sure because of her attitude, We did have some good times tho... When I was 15 my mother just couldnt take it any more and met me at the door one day when I had been expelled from school with two garbage bags of my things told me I was a whore, had made her baby boy what he was (my brother GAG had molested, raped and sold me for years when I was younger) and she wanted me the hell out of her house. Things did not improve between she and myself for years.

After my first child was born when I was 24 things got a tad bit better and continued to do so thru the birth of my 2nd one, my college graduation and my divorce. Then came my HUGE breakdown and my rediagnose - had been misdx'd at 14 as borderline and my relationship got even better. By the time I moved in with her and daddy to take care of her when she was dying we had managed to put the past behind us and forgive each other for whatever wrongs/supposed wrongs had gone down so many years before