You can't fix what's wrong with you by trying to fix your parents or your relationship with them. As HPMOR would say, there is no point in assigning blame to a part of the system that you can't actually change.
That doesn't mean you're responsible for anything, it just means that when it comes to this type of dysfunction, the real problem exists in your "inner parents" rather than your outer ones. That is, your mental models of your parents, specifically the part of your brain that predicts how they will act in certain situations, and decides how you should feel/act about that.
Lots of people will say stuff about getting away from your parents, or how wrong they are or how you should speak up to them or whatever. This is irrelevant, because if your mental models make you feel bad about cutting off contact or speaking up, then you're going to have problems doing that. What you need more is to give up hope regarding your parents, whether you cut off contact or not.
What do I mean by "give up hope"? I mean that the thing that keeps you bound to their opinions is your desire to get something from them: love, acknowledgment, respect, etc. -- just as you're already starting to realize. As long as you feel it's possible for you to receive any of this, you'll be stuck trying to do things their way, or at least feeling like you should.
This happened because your parents put out "bait" that implies it's possible for you to get their good opinion (e.g. by being like your sister). Your brain thinks, "ah, so if I do what they want, maybe they'll give it to me."
A quick way to begin poking holes in this belief is to imagine that you have done everything perfectly to their desire, been the exact person they wanted you to be... and then ask that same part of your brain, "What would happen then?"
Most likely, if you actually reflect on it, you'll see that what your parents would do at that point is ignore you, or possibly tell your sister to be more like you... but there will not actually be any love, respect, etc. coming.
Don't logic this out; though. It's necessary for the part of your brain that makes emotional predictions to work this out for itself, by you asking questions and reflecting. Otherwise, it will just be in the logic part of your head, not the emotional part. The emotional part has to see, "oh, my prediction is in error - that wouldn't work out the way I want." Otherwise, you will be stuck knowing you should do something different, but still doing the same things as you did before.
Unfortunately, this is not a one-time, one-off thing to fix. Your brain may have hundreds of specific expectations that "If I do this thing in this kind of circumstance, they will finally love/appreciate/whatever me", and each one may have to be handled separately. In addition, it can sometimes seem to generate new ones! The emotional brain doesn't generalize in the same way the logical brain does, and doesn't seem (in my experience) to abstract across different classes of expectations when making these kinds of changes. But that's my personal experience and YMMV.
In a sense, the root cause of these "If only I do X, I will get Y" beliefs is a belief (alief, really, since it's not a logical thing) that you aren't worthy of receiving Y. There's like a part of our brains that imprints on our parents' behavior in order to learn what we're entitled to in our tribe, so to speak, and what we can expect to receive from others. If they don't give us love, respect, whatever, there's a part that learns "I have to earn this, then."
(The technical term, by the way, for this feeling you don't deserve good things (love, appreciation, respect, etc.) and need to earn your "pats on the back", is shame, and it's the #1 byproduct of being treated the way narcissistic parents treat us. So when you look at or for books on dealing with this, that's a keyword you want to look out for.)
Giving up hope that you can earn these pats on the back in a particular area is one way to uproot shame, but there's another method that seems to have an advantage in bypassing this and going after a feeling that you deserve to receive Y as a fundamental right... thereby eliminating the feeling that you need to earn it.
The method is described in this book, though it does contain some new age babble (that can be safely ignored if you focus on the specific instructions rather than theory).
The approach described does seem to be able to work at a higher level of abstraction than the other method I've described, by "giving up hope" of fixing various aspects of one's self rather than the hope of getting positive interactions from others. It still will need to be applied to a lot of things, but it may cover more ground faster, if you can make it work for you. I don't have as much experience with it personally as the other method, but it does seem at first glance to bring a much deeper sense of being at peace with myself and with the people whose "pats on the back" I previously sought.
The link no longer works... what is the book?
I recently saw some posts here about how LW helps with personal stuff and that it's a good idea to post here1. Plus, you are the most supportive people I've ever met. I still hesitate. Know my courage. Also, I pretty much always put needs and feeling of other people ahead of mine, because "mine are not as important" (more on that in note 3 and 5). Saying my feelings and needs out loud is really scary. Writing them down is almost unimaginable.
I recently parted ways with my psychologist, but don't yet want to find a new one. Between our last meetings I had a thought that (as usually) was not explored deep enough. And I think I need to go deeper in it. Maybe you can point me in
the right disome interesting directions?A bit of background information about me and my parents: as a child and adolescent I did not exist as a separate person. I lived by the side of perfection, always not good enough, or simply not good. The chant of that time was "why can't you ... like your sister?" (have good grades, keep the room tidy, have friends, be nice - insert almost anything you can imagine)2. There were also other problems, but let's not make this part too long.
When I grew up and discovered that this all was not normal nor right, I became bitter and angry3. I keep in touch with them, act as if almost everything is fine, but boil inside a lot.
On the surface I want to fix things. I want to be able to ask my mum to teach me something (I haven't been able to do this since I was a preschooler, partly because I feared being laughed at), I want to look at my dad and not remember him calling me a murderer3. In my country it's even unthinkable that I am trying to cut the contact with one of my grandmothers4.
So I invented that I want my mother to understand why what she did was hurting me and apologise. She knows that I think she wronged me, though I doubt she realizes how very bitter I am about it all. For her, the solution is to start anew, with a blank space. I can't do that; I spent my adolescence being hit by her and apologising to her for whatever she deemed my fault on a given day. The problem with my solution is that she's incapable of it. For the sake of simplification: she does not comprehend other people's emotions (but she does have emotions of her own and she mostly comprehends them)5.
My new thought to look at "my solution" from a different perspective. Maybe me wanting to make amends with them this particular way is a bit like looking for approval the same way I did as a child. Maybe my mother saying "I hurt you, I'm sorry" would be like her saying "you were right, you are a good girl". Since I never got approval as a child, I should not expect it as an adult. Does this look sensible?
Maybe the adult thing for me to do would be to stop looking for these pats-on-the-back. And also the tiny pats-on-the-back I get when I act around them as if almost everything is fine while boiling inside and they reciprocate niceties. And that might mean cutting the contact as much as I can (which is of course scary and unimaginable). Or am I just going in one direction, where more are possible?
Maybe I should stop trying to invent ways to fix things6. Maybe I should tell them how angry I am, and tell them in a way that prohibits them from interrupting me or reacting sooner than let's say a week later. But then again - would that do any good? Would they be able to understand me if they've never tried it before? Or is the question "would that do any good" just an example of my regular tendency to place other people ahead and diminute my needs?
1. Asking personal questions on LW, I don't remember the other ones now
2. She was more brilliant than me, managed to keep some friends even though we were the only kids in our class (yes, younger, but the same class - she went to school early and was always at the top) living outside the area etc. Another chant was "if you don't lose weight now, you'll be a cripple when you grow up", even though I had a perfectly normal figure. Everybody would routinely mix our names. The parents would routinely mix up our preferences about food, colours, favourite subjects etc. In a way: there was no me, there was just her and a faulty copy of her, who would keep being faulty on purpose, in order to enrage mother.
3. This last straw fell when my father (who was much more taciturn in scolding me, so back then I still had some sypathy for him) heard that my son and his (then) only grandchild suffered from a genetic disease that kills babies before they turn 2. After I explained the genetics of the disease, testing fetuses, chances, potential choices etc. he showed no sympathy, only asked "but you do know that you're commiting an infanticide?" His catholicism was more important to him than his daughter's grief over her dying child. Then it took me two weeks to stop feeling for him and decide that his reaction was inappropriate.
4. This last straw fell when she was playing with said dying child while I was away for a couple of hours. I got a letter regarding some testing in another country. She opened the letter, saw it was in English, took a dictionary, failed to make any sense of it and asked other people to help her. And when I came back and got angry at her reading my correspondece, she got outraged because she considered it her right. But I kept quiet for another year or two before I told her I don't want her near my children.
5. She thaught me empathy this way: I was always supposed to take into account how my actions would look from her point of view (given that she would not even try to reciprocate and always choose one of the worst interpretations). Empathy is my superpower now; I see a person and know what they feel about a situation, though I lack confidence in acting upon my insight.
6. At some point I was planning on employing someone to help her with the "understand why what she did was hurting me" part.