Love my kids but hate parenting

Throwaway account.My kids are 12 and 7 and I love them but if I’m being completely honest, I am terrible at parenting and I don’t enjoy it more than I do. If I can pass the parenting responsibilities to my partner or other family I will 100% of the time. If I didn’t have such involved family members, if something ever happened to my husband or siblings or parents I don’t think I could actually parent my own children.I worked with high risk teenagers for years and I loved them, I feel though because I could be emotionally removed it was a lot easier to manage their needs and desires. That was 10 years ago. Behaviourally my kids are really on par with their peers. Bright, vivacious, generally thoughtful and even still waking up to parent is so hard for me. If parenting was a job I could quit, I would....but I don’t want to.I want to desperately enjoy it, I want my kids to feel I love them (I do) but I think they mostly hear me say I love them. I have gone through ups and downs in my parenting skill level but it’s still abysmal. I keep my kids alive, fed, clothed and with their creature comforts but I’m not engaging and I’m rarely fun with them. I am serious, authoritative and curt and every single day as a parent feels like an endurance test. My mother cries when she watches me parents (to the point, usually with a very cool attitude). I don’t withhold affection and my kids seek affection a lot but generally I have to think to be conscious to give them the affection they want without their coming to me. Luckily my partner and my other family LIVE for my kids joy. I seem to live for their management.I have severe mental health issues (depression, bipolar, borderline personality disorder) and then a lot of historical trauma. I planned on not having children but that’s a medical nightmare story in its own right.How do other parents who may feel similarly all the time like me, or even some of the time manage themselves? I want happy rounded kids but I am not even that for myself, I’m doing my very best but I feel like every day is a Groundhog Day of emotional endurance tests when it’s really, the most basic parenting for pretty good kids in general. I’ve been in intensive therapy for 12 years, medicated for just as long and very involved with child protection professionally. My life is saturated with kids, mine and others and I’m struggling. It has less to do kids I think and more to do with my brain. Parenting on fire....am I alone? I feel like I am... via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2oLIRAf