Ep. 2 What Happens When… You’re in the Shit Dad Club

Join Gem for this episode, "What Happens When... You're in the Shit Dad Club?"

Gem talks about something that heavily contributed to their cPTSD flare-up earlier this year. Whilst walking along the banks of the River Tweed, Gem describes what it's like being the child of a terrible dad and therefore a member of the Shit Dad Club, the culture of silence and shame that can exist in families and growing up as an unidentified neurodivergent child who refuses school and experiences bullying.

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Find out more about me and my work at www.gemkennedy.com and @thegemkennedy in all the usual places.

Transcript

00:23

Okay, I'm outside. I cannot tell you the energy and the battle that is taken to get me outside. It's raining, and I don't like walking in the rain, but I know that I need to go.

00:41

So here we are. Yesterday, I basically spent the afternoon going to the gym, which was really helpful to try and process and stuff and switch off a bit as well. And yeah, I was just exhausted. I went to bed. I got into bed about 5:30pm and then just rested, watched some stuff on my laptop, and then eventually went to sleep.

01:17

So today, I'm aiming to walk from Roxburgh, which is the village I'm staying in to Kelso, which is a nearby town. Apparently, the walk takes three hours, like a round trip, and it's 10 kilometers. I'm a bit daunted by it, just in case I get lost, but we'll see how it goes.

01:51

Today, I want to talk about what happens when you're in the Shit Dad Club. And for anyone who doesn't know the shit dad Club is a club that lots of people are members of, maybe without you know, you haven't necessarily signed up or anything, but if you have a shit dad, a vaguely shit dad, you're also welcome to join. But I feel like it's important for me to record this particular episode, because having a shit dad has been a real source of pain in my life, as much as at times I've wanted to pretend that it doesn't bother me, or like I don't care.

02:39

Actually, I think there's something important about being able to talk about what it's like as the child of a shit dad, and I guess there's something about wanting to speak out, because I feel like a lot of people will relate, maybe not to the specific experiences, but certainly to the general experience of having a parent who just can't or who just isn't able to parent us in the way that we would like to be parented. Not necessarily can't, but also who isn't willing to.

03:24

I think I'm just really aware that there are so many basic ways in which I as a child of a shit dad have been failed. And, you know, luckily, I had another parent who was really supportive and understood me better. But still, it was not a great place to grow up in, or a great way to grow up. And the reason I want to talk about stuff to do with this is because for such for so many families, I feel like there's this culture of silence and people feeling like they can't really speak out about what happened to them, or it's somehow shameful for them to speak out about their experience. And so it's better just, you know, family pressure and all of that stuff, it's better just to be quiet.

04:26

I don't know which way to go now. I'm just staring at two different paths. Okay, just keep going along the river.

04:34

I think you know all of the systems that we exist within are very good at encouraging us to suppress our experience, or you know that we should... We should just make do with what we had. At least it wasn't as bad as x, or it could have been worse. But I think when there's a culture in family of no accountability, and also just everyone around the person who has done the harmful behavior, pretending like everything's fine, or even colluding with the person and kind of sweeping up their mess. It's really fucking stressful and disorientating and confusing to be the person in that situation who can see that what is happening is not okay, or to just be looking around at everyone being like, can no one else see that this is fucked up?

05:39

And I think through much of my childhood and adulthood, there was this sense of like, how can no one else see that this behavior isn't okay? Over time I guess there are a few more people who have recognized what's happening and chosen to kind of take a different approach, or, like, move themselves away.

06:05

It's so disappointing that if you happen to be the person who chooses to break the cycle, or wants to move away from the bad behavior and will not collude anymore in covering up the person's actions, that you become the one who is ostracized.

06:26

So I'm just walking over a really rickety old bridge, maybe up there? Okay, I'm just trying to follow what looks like it's been walked before, because it is not clear.

06:42

So yeah, so there have been people in my family who have stopped speaking to me or who have stopped inviting me to things, and that's quite painful, because on the one hand, I don't want to be involved in things that are connected to a person who they cover up the actions of or whatever, and have awfully toxic connections with themselves. But at the same time, it still hurts, because they're my family and like, I don't know to what extent my different intersecting identities play a role in that, and what the narrative has been around me not being in contact. So all of that to say it's really complicated and it's painful, and for a long time, I thought I would just not say anything and just go about my business, which is totally a legit thing to do, but at the same time, I feel like when you're in pain because of someone's actions, and you feel like you can't speak out because of what other people will say, or how they'll behave, or whatever. I just don't want to be put off by that anymore. I'm not going to be silenced, essentially. So here goes...

08:15

Oh, wow, there's a massive bull in the field.

08:20

I don't even know, as I said all those things. I'm not even sure if I've said it well or whatever. I guess the point is that there are things I need to talk about, and I think it's important to be able to share our experience.

08:38

So where to begin? It feels important to say that I want to be really conscious to tell my story from my perspective, and try and be very aware of not speaking on behalf of other people. So this is my experience and whether other people agree with me or not, who were involved in this with the same person, I don't care, because this is my experience. And for a long time, I was told that there was nothing to worry about, or that everything was fine. I was being too sensitive. So I just want to say that up front, like, this is my experience. I'm sharing things that are relevant to me. I'm not sharing on behalf of anyone else. And, yeah, it also feels quite scary.

09:46

Oh, there's loads of I think swifts flying around the farm. So cool.

09:56

Hello. Aren't you gorgeous? Hi? Oh my gosh, there's the most beautiful cows.

10:09

I did not grow up having a good relationship with my dad. He was basically never around. He would frequently leave my mum to look after me from a very, you know, literally from when I was six months old, he decided to go to the US on a trip. And that kind of persisted. And even when he was around, physically, he was not present, and was not a person who I really ever felt like I could go to with concerns or worries.

10:49

I was really badly bullied in primary school. In more recent times, as I've realized that I'm autistic and ADHD and I look back at my school experience, I realized that I was a school refuser, and I remember begging my mum not to send me to school. It was pretty intense.

11:08

And yeah, obviously no one knew that I was autistic and ADHD, so there was just this constant experience of struggling and not realizing I was struggling necessarily, because I don't know really, I guess at school, I tried to mask the best I could, and even despite all the energy I put into masking, it was still very obvious that I was different and that people hated me and my difference, and I really struggled socially. I had a best friend who was a doll called Alice that my mum gave to me, and I would take her with me every day to school. And then at some point, the teacher said that I wasn't allowed to bring Alice anymore, and I remember feeling devastated. So it was really hard.

12:03

And the thing that was probably the most difficult about it was that I went to school and was bullied at school horrendously, and then at home, I was essentially bullied for being bullied. I would frequently hear things like, "You need to toughen up. They wouldn't bully you if you weren't so weak. Just don't let it bother you. Why are you so sensitive?". All of that crap, which was really painful, and I think I internalized a lot of and really had just such low self esteem, and I really felt like I deserved to be bullied, or I wasn't doing something right, and so it was my own fault. And obviously when that message is reinforced you at home, and when teachers, for various reasons, are not taking it seriously, like one of the teachers in our school was the parent of two of the children who were bullying me and like didn't care, so there was just this whole not ideal situation.

13:25

But like I said, I think the most painful part was that at home, it wasn't being validated by one of my parents. And was actually I was being told that it was my fault. And I would say that from then, it kind of persisted through my childhood of like me, knowing my own mind and being quite different, and at the same time being very scared at times to be myself.

13:55

Yeah, just growing up with an absent physically most of the time, and the rest of the time an absent, emotionally, absently, emotionally absent parent was really shit. And my mum, I know, would say things frequently, like "If you don't put the work in now, then you're gonna struggle in the future, because you won't know them, and they won't want to know you," and all of that kind of stuff. But I feel like we had sort of to some extent, muddled through in my 20s to the point where I thought, you know, there are just certain things I can never expect from my dad. My parents got divorced when I was in my early 20s, it was horrendously stressful for all sorts of reasons, and eventually things seemed to settle into some kind of like, different normality. Fine.

15:00

Hello,

15:02

Hi, thank you.

15:04

That's okay. It's very overgrown.

15:06

Oh, it is, well, you can see sort of wet trousers, but it is quite overgrown.

15:13

Okay, thanks for heads up. They were really nice.

15:20

Yeah, so around eight years ago, nine years ago, I was... I'd had my second child, and I really didn't want to go back to work, and I decided, or, you know, working for someone else, I really needed extra flexibility, and especially to be able to make home ed work. So I decided my dad had been going on about this particular business idea that he wanted to do, and I thought, okay, like I could do that. Let's give it a go. And that's not really that important. But essentially it meant that I had access to his laptop, because he asked me to fix his laptop one day. It wasn't working, and he left his emails open, and in his emails were messages from women like visible, easily visible. And he must have obviously realized at some point that I might see those, so he deleted them. But what he hadn't done was deleted the sent ones - rookie mistake. I checked the emails, because at this point, I should mention he had struck up a relationship with my mum again, and was saying that he wanted to get back with her and they should try again and all of this stuff.

16:52

So seeing messages from women saying things like, "I love you" was obviously not right. So I read his sent emails to these women, and there were multiple women, one, for example, was in Russia. One was based in the UK, and there was another one. I'm not sure where they were based. But there were things like, "I love you so much. I can't wait to see you". And he had apparently flown to Russia. I had met his Russian partner, who he had told me they were just friends. And actually, obviously it turned out that they were not.

17:37

So all of this was, like, quite stressful and upsetting. And then I thought about my mum, and obviously my mum had no idea, like she really thought that they were in a monogamous relationship. I wasn't really sure what was best to do. But then he booked a flight. My mom had mentioned to me in passing that he had that she had lent him money to pay for things like accountancy bills, tax bills, that kind of thing. And then she mentioned that she lent him like 900 pounds, and I saw that he booked a holiday for him and one of his girlfriends to Cyprus, for 900 pounds, and so I went to my mum's. I'd taken screenshots of the emails, and I shared them with her, and she was totally shocked. And then we had to go and tell my sister, and it was just horrible.

18:51

And then my mum said, "Oh, I think I know why this has happened." And she went on to tell us that in the December before, so like, about three months before, maybe two months she had picked him up from the pub, and he had been upset, which is unlike my dad, and he had started to cry and said, the reason that he'd been such an absent father and such an absent husband was because he'd been a spy and he'd been traveling around the world and gathering intelligence and stuff, and my mum believed him. And so then, when I told her about what happened, she was like, "Oh, it's because he's a spy. He's using this money as part of his spying work."

19:48

So it just becomes this horrible, messy situation where we confront my dad. He doesn't apologize. He doesn't like not once did he apologize about what had happened. It was all about how he was a victim, Poor him, blah, blah, blah. And it came out, or we discovered that my mum had lent him, or he had stolen 75,000 pounds from my mum over the sort of six months that they had been supposed to be in a relationship for.

20:35

And he said, "Oh, I'll pay you back at some point. I don't have the money." My mum lent him the money, being told that it was for paying accountants fees and tax bills and stuff, and actually he was taking other women on holiday and using it to fund his lifestyle. We wrote him an email from my mum's account, which said, "You have a month to give the money back. If you don't give the money back by whatever date, then we will go to the police and they can deal with it."

21:09

And I'm just gonna sit down for a minute. I found a bench. This is horrible to talk about. There's part of me that feels like I'm doing something wrong by telling the story, and also part of me that just feels embarrassed that this is my family story. But this is the whole point in doing it, to not feel or to try and feel less shame about it.

21:52

So my dad gets various members of his family to put pressure on my mum, saying things like, he could pay her back in the future, or she could have it bit by bit, and luckily, she held firm and said, "No, that's the date. That's when the money needs to be back or we're going to the police."

22:14

No one got in touch with me to see if I was okay or to see if my mom needed support. It was literally just rallying around my dad, and he gave the money back £75,000. So at that point, I decided I didn't want to have a further relationship with him. You know, I've had to support my children through the process of not being in contact with their granddad anymore and trying to explain in an age appropriate way why that is because I'm not willing to collude in his behavior and just allow my children to be manipulated like I was as a kid. Yeah, there was literally no way that it could continue.

23:03

All of that to say I didn't have anything to do with him for a very long time. And again, relatives didn't check in and see how we were doing. No one else in the family was told. So I had experiences where people would tell me, "Oh, your dad's visiting us" and I would have to say or they would ask me about my dad, and I would have to say we're not in contact, and they would want to know why, and I wouldn't know how much to tell because it feels embarrassing and shit and there were times where I told some relatives, you know, it didn't change how they were in relationship with my dad. And part of me thinks, fair enough, that's their choice to make. But another part of me thinks like, where is the solidarity? And why is it that the people who have been harmed are the ones who are made to feel shame, and the person who has done harmful things is just allowed to carry on regardless? I tell you all this, obviously, to try to clear some of the shame and to try to give some support or like sense of validation to people who've been through similar but maybe I wouldn't have needed to tell it if it wasn't for something that happened earlier this year, and the thing that played a massive part in the trauma response, essentially, I mentioned in the previous episode.

25:06

So earlier this year, in April, I found out from my mum that my dad had done the same thing to someone else, and my mum told me, as in, like he's done it again. He'll never change. And there have been times where, over the years, I thought, you know, maybe I should reconsider. Am I doing the right thing? Can people change just...

25:45

Nearly fell down the riverbank!

25:48

...can people change? Have I got it wrong? And then I'd hear like small snippets of about his behavior that would kind of reassure me that he hadn't. And then this happened. And on the one hand, it felt really liberating, because I thought, you know what you know now for sure that he hasn't changed, he's not going to change, and his behavior towards women is fucked up.

26:24

So on the one hand, that felt liberating, and on the other hand, I guess my physical or like subconscious response to it, compounded by other things that were going on, was like, "Well, how much are you like him? This is your dad. This is a person who, like you, share DNA with and what if you're just like him, and you don't know it?" All of that kind of stuff. Like, "maybe you're just kidding yourself, maybe you're exactly the same".

27:05

And honestly, it sent me in to a massive spiral, and that's where I was getting a lot of intrusive thoughts. I was feeling really stressed about everything.

27:19

It's really interesting. I'm walking through the most overgrown patch of path. It's like up to my hips almost Well, I'm not that tall, but it feels quite high for me. It's very thistle-y and nettle-y. I'm glad I bought a pair of trousers in the end.

27:45

Yeah, and it's just, it's been really distressing, and like I said in the previous episode, having that experience of my nervous system being so activated and feeling so distressed for sort of four months, it was just awful. And I guess there was so much to process, because I really, over the years, just stopped thinking about my dad. When people would talk about their dads, I would just kind of feel like I don't have one, so I can't relate, or like it's not relevant.

28:34

And really, I thought, I guess, that that was going to be the extent of it, that like I could just somehow not engage with him as an idea or as a real person, just not think about it anymore. And obviously that experience showed me that that is not really possible, that there is still kind of messy, complicated stuff to think about with it, and it's painful in so many different ways. It's almost like I find it hard to connect to the pain of the experience, because it feels in a way, so normalized to me, and it's only then, when I say out loud to other people that they show like shock or surprise or whatever. And you know, this is not, these are not kind of one off situations. This is against a backdrop of consistently problematic experiences as a child, as a teenager, and also knowing that no matter what you do, the person will always consider themselves to be a victim. They'll always try to get sympathy from people around them despite...

30:11

Oh my God. Oh, they're ducks. I thought I could see otters, but they're ducks. I mean, ducks are cool too, but...

30:21

oh,

30:30

How do you even consider engaging with a person when you know that they can't take accountability for what they've done, and the fact that other people around you persist to engage with the person because of something they get from the situation, and how painful that can be when it feels like no matter what your pain or what the person has done, their own sort of sense of like being able to pretend that everything is fine and everything is normal is more important than needing to speak with or engage with the truth.

31:15

I think for a long time, I just felt like, you know, am I too sensitive? Have I taken things too personally or whatever? But it's not just about me either. There are people that this has affected hugely who I care about. And yeah, I don't know.

31:44

So I guess that's the story. I feel exhausted and drained, and also wonder if I've like told it, right? You know? But that is if I was telling it to a friend, that is literally how I would tell it.

32:11

So what happens when you're in the shit dad club? I guess that's some of what happened for me.