like, my earliest memory was being 4 years old, my dad towering over me and screaming at me as he canes me. in what world do you cane a 4 year old ..? they don't understand what they did wrong. they just know it hurts. i don't even know what i did to get a beating, i just remember crying and hurting. it's such a bad trigger that the new sims 4 expansion pack mentioning "rattan" (the same thing canes were made of) sent me into a dissociative spiral/panic attack where my heart wouldn't stop racing :'). and this is all my childhood memories, really. there's some happy parts i guess but mostly i just remember the abuse. idk. it sucks
do you ever think "my childhood wasn't that bad" until you *really* start thinking about it
Trigger Warning: Physical Abuseyeah… i talk about my childhood to my friends and they compare the stuff my parents did to torture. and it’s uncomfortable in a way that to other people what my childhood was, would be horrific to them… when it’s just “normal” to me
Do you talk about details in your therapy sessions? I had my sixth therapy session with the fourth therapist and nobody was asking anything specific about what exactly happened. Like you, I’m listing the variables in a casual tone, relation to abuser, what age, how often, violence no, coercion not really, porn yes, etc.
I was wondering, shouldn’t they ask? Do they want to protect me from too much confrontation or is this simply not part of therapy? Or is it too disgusting?
I've been in therapy for around three years, and in the first year I barely touched the specifics. For me it has very much become part of my therapy, but I'm still really careful about reexperiencing. There have been sessions that have had really big impacts on me, that trigger trauma responses. And a lot of the events I'm describing weren't even ones I would have previously thought as particularly traumatic.
My therapist has been very careful and understands that I need to take this slowly, and the start of our work together was just building the relationship, working on techniques and mindfulness, and focusing on the day to day experience of living with trauma. In my case they do want to balance the heaviness of the work with how much emotional capacity I had, and at the start of the work my capacity was low. At the time it was weird, because I didn't even feel like the things I was saying were a big deal, but I recognise now that I was disassociated in those sessions which is an unhealthy coping mechanism my therapist wants to avoid triggering.
Tl;dr reprocessing traumatic events is part of therapy, but it's really hard work and your therapist might be working up to it over time. I hope you don't ever feel like what happened to you is too disgusting for your therapist, unless you've got a really bad one they won't be thinking that at all.
I agree that they will most likely be taking things slowly but I also feel that a good therapist will keep you informed about the process if that's something you're wanting to know. Asking them is a good opportunity to build trust and see if you want to tell them.
I have been with my T for 10 months with long history of documented abuse. I was not ready when I started. I could not sit still. Then diagnosed with adhd on top of trauma. The meds took the ants out of my pants and I can sit still. I can stay in a conversation longer without going on a world tour. I will say there is a fear for me now. The hard work comes as I am regulted. Yes, I too was dismayed at the delay to dive in. If we did I have no idea where I could go. There is a blackness I feel. I know also that we need to give ourselves GRACE. I feel as though I have suffered enough. I want this cloud to go away. I think I still need baby steps. I have started to volunteer and it has helped get out of head. Also keeps me outta that blackness. Next weekend a marathon for vets. Somedays I still forget I have balls on my feet. I wish and pray for you to find your peace, keep up the hard work!
I’m the type of guy who’d rather take a risk and go straight where it hurts in order to get results. I’m in my early fifties and I don’t have that much time left. But I suddenly realized yesterday that the last talk therapy session, where the therapist intentionally stopped me from going further had quite an impact.
I’m fully aware now about 1. the awful and criminal abuse I had to endure for so many years 2. my oh so mindful and altruistic family left me alone with the pedocriminal every goddamn weekend 3. the fact that when I disclosed the abuse 15 years ago history repeated: sorry and long faces, but no support whatsoever, no discussion, no initiative to get me professional help 4. I achieved so much in life and I still feel completely worthless. I’d say it’s not surprising if you’re sacrificed by your own family to keep the (already convicted) pedophile off the streets. I feel trafficked. I feel like a piece of garbage in desperate need of abuse to be useful. 5. The only thing I can feel pride about is satisfying someone sexually. Not myself, that doesn’t matter.
I know most of this for years but now that I’ve shared it, I couldn’t be more shocked about the dimensions of the abuse. I’m sure now this was too fast. But there’s no going back, every hour that goes by serves me another dimension. About they MUST have known. About how the abuser pressured me. About how confused I was all my life about right or wrong, always leaning towards radical positions, understanding the most atrocious actions. The violent phantasms, the constant flirt with suicide, the risks I took, the self care I didn’t do.
I have given up on myself because everyone in my family had obviously given up on me. For the sake of a pedophile. I’m nothing, I learned that I only existed to satisfy others.
And I really thought, we were a “good” family, with the social engagement and all. How could they sleep at night while enabling or letting it happen to an innocent little boy? I always thought I wanted it too, but wtf does a six or seven or eight year old know what he wants sexually???
And when I finally dropped the bomb and shared what happened, they just said oh my gosh, we never thought that could happen in our family. What. The. Fuck. Not a single move to help me with the consequences of their negligence, of their absolute failure as parents. Invalidated again. I would have been better off not to tell them, because then I would have looked for help on my own. Like this I thought, ok, if that’s all, probably no biggie. Damn, I’m so broken
Imo it's always a matter of your comfort. For starters I'd just ask your therapy this exact question, about why they're not asking for more details.
I think some details are more like just circumstantial information and might not hold much emotional weight in the processing. That is, unless you feel they're important.
The last part 😭😭 so painfully true. I relate to everything you said.
Every damn time. When I started examining why I remembered just of my childhood in third person freaked me out. Memories are much night frightening from the perspective of a child. We deserved better.
My therapist has a bad poker face which clues me in most of the time
Same. Nothing like telling her what happened and her shocked face showing through.
I was very confused as a child when my free therapist in training told me and my mom that she couldn’t help me anymore after she left the room crying during a session. The actual therapist wasn’t as good as her though.
For me, it’s my friends starting to have kids and me having a totally casual memory of something that happened in my childhood then suddenly realizing I’d be horrified if that thing was happening in my friends house. Like, there’s the straight up abuse that is obviously horrific and would call for an immediate call to police but there are all of these ‘little’ instances of neglect that happened to me that didn’t seem like a big deal, and still didn’t until I recently started to unpack it all. And, I realize, holy crap, if my friend was, like, just leaving their kid at home all day and the kid complained there hadn’t been anything to eat, I’d have a serious conversation of concern with my friend and I’d provide any and all resources that I could to fix the situation. And if my friend indicated they didn’t care, I’d be taking that kid home with me and calling CPS. Yes, this would technically be kidnapping but this is all hypothetical because I’m not friends with any POS that would actually do this.
I used to think that way until my therapist told me that if I had come to her before I turned 18 and told her my dad was hitting me and my sisters she would have been required to tell cps/ the police as a mandated reporter. Once she said that it clicked with me how “used to it” I was, the abuse didnt seem like a big deal when I was enduring it. When you can’t really understand how bad of a situation you’re in it will come out in other ways: depression, addiction, crippling anxiety. Realizing that made a lot of aspects of my life click and it was a big step in moving forward to improve my life.
It was a huge turning point when my therapist said this to me. I completely relate to the feeling of so many things clicking. But I still feel deeply uncomfortable with the idea that it really was “that bad”. It triggers a lot of internal conflict because denial was a huge part of my coping mechanism. That and massive amounts of gaslighting (another term that makes me feel uncomfortable although the rational part of me knows this is an accurate term to describe my experience).
I was a mandated reporter and it would throw me into a tailspin. While the system has improved somewhat it still sucks. Think of it like finding a bad therapist and questioning yourself if it is you or them. Then reality and you pray for the end of shift with no tears.
When you can’t really understand how bad of a situation you’re in it will come out in other ways: depression, addiction, crippling anxiety.
And the really tough thing to parse is that those are defense mechanisms. They stay with you into adulthood and you want to be rid of them, rightly so, but we forget that at some point those disregulations actually kept us alive and somewhat sane. It's counter intuitive but I think we must recognize the value that they once had in order to fully get over those ailments.
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20d
im sorry :( my parents straight up deny their abuse if i try and bring it up, even if it’s more recent… it makes me feel like im overdramatic and crazy. but then they also threaten me with the things they did in the past so its like. which is it? idk
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20d
You never should have went through any of that. I’m so sorry, it makes me happy to see you’ve gotten help to grow. You know way more than she ever did.
I still do. Then I see the look of utter shock and disgust or pity on someone’s face. Bonus points if it’s my counselor at the methadone clinic bc he has heard some shit. He actually told me I won the shitty childhood award lmfao.
I made my therapist tear up, that's got to be some kind of achievement!
I once realized I lived in a closet with barely anything for awhile and thought how odd that was in retrospect. My family moved to a 3 bedroom house when I was 11. My parents had one bedroom, they used the den as a bedroom for my younger brother. Then each of my older sisters got a bedroom. My mom threw an old used twin mattress from someone’s trash in the crawlspace in my One sister’s bedroom (no sheets) that connected to the closet in the other sister’s bedroom. She then put my radio, record player, cd Player, books and music in the closet with a folded up blanket I could sit on to listen to it. I’d sit cross cross applesauce there for hours on end with headphones, avoiding goi bf to sleep because I hated that f***ing gross mattress. When I laid on it, it felt so nasty and it was pitch dark on that crawlspace. There was an opening in the wall on the one side that went into the primary crawlspace and it would keep me Up feeling so creeped out wondering what was on there. I’d blast a box fan right in my face and just freeze til I fell asleep.
Eventually, my dad surprisingly said “Bonnie can’t keep just living in a hole In the wall” to my mom. So eventually they forced my sisters to share a room and o got my own room then.
I couldn’t stand my father, but the memory of him freeing me from the closet life is one of his few redeeming factors.
I also remember a lot of sexual grooming etc that just seemed totes normal to me growing up that was clearly not okay. And physical abuse from my one sister that was “normalized” as just sibling bs in my childhood (breaking my arm, holding my head under water til I’d pee myself). My mom and sister saying really crude things about my breasts and body as I went through puberty.
I never thought twice about all of that til I had kids of my own.
It makes such a difference thinking about it as “this is happening to a child” instead of “oh, it’s just me; I’m fine”
(Internalized abuse. Not fine)
I went through something similar. My parents had me and my sister really young and they always have been neglectful at best and abusive at worst. We used to live in an apartment with 2 bedrooms. My parents had one, and my sister and I shared the other one but as we grew older, it was obvious we needed more privacy. So I moved to a sort of storage room where my bed barely fitted in. In retrospect, I don't know how I spent years and years living in a closet, but my parents didn't seem to give a fuck either.
Absolutely. My brain is comfortable with dissociating from the truth and keeping me stuck in shame instead, bc that’s what always kept me safe. I can go weeks nowadays in a semi-dissociated state before I re-remember what actually happened to me and that I’m actually better off completely on my own, bc I always was when I was being actively abused anyways, even though they were physically near me. (My therapist is usually still necessary to help me “re-remember”. I imagine I’ll continue to get better at doing it on my own though:)
I’m sorry that happened to you.
I used to think it wasn’t so bad even though I’d done research in middle school to learn how to survive the abuse long term. I created a list, so I wouldn’t forget again, and get wild reactions from people when I shared parts of it. What really helped was needing to update the list a number of times over the years as there were so many things I forgot/my brain hid. I have gotten some relief from writing it down. My brain is like “oh good I don’t have to work so hard as it’s elsewhere now”.
Writing helps.
I have a memory of recording the abuse at one point because I knew no one would believe it if I tried to describe it myself. I can’t find it though and look periodically. I have this general urge to keep things and I think it may be in part because I have forgotten most of what happened. But it also feels important to be able to remember. I’m glad you kept a list.
I can’t trust my memories so I was writing things down at one time. I’m sorry you’ve misplaced your notes. Depending on your mental state you might find it helpful to document what you can remember. It can be helpful for sharing with therapist as well as using with EMDR if you end up going that route. It’s also useful when gaslighting ourselves that it wasn’t that bad - pull it up and just glance over it, there’s no need to read in detail, I’ve found just seeing it’s a long list is enough to give me the reality check I need. If you decide to recreate your record again I advise planning a lot of self care before you start, throughout the process, and afterwards. I’d giving your support network a heads up. I’m a chat away if you need me - just mention “documenting abuse” so my brain catches up quickly.
Thank you. That is kind.
For so long, I thought the idea of being traumatized by my parent's divorce was laughable. But my dad frankly terrorized me and my little brother. I have significant memory issues from that time frame, but I recall such vivid feelings of being terrified of going to his place and needing to protect my brother from him. He didn't beat us (I have significant reason to believe he may have SA'd me but I repressed the memory, which is something I'm not ready to confront) but the emotional manipulation, threats of having us arrested for not complying with visitation, gaslighting, guilt tripping was really fucked up. Like he broke into our house and kidnapped our dog, and essentially tried to hold our beloved family pet for ransom in exchange for increased visitation. I considered this a funny story for years but when I tried sharing it at a party, everyone else was horrified. Thankfully the judge was absolutely horrified and my dad's visitation eventually ended up being significantly cut from the original plan to 2-4 hour visits twice a month without any alcohol present. My mom's lawyer ended up taking her case pro bono because my dad was the biggest asshole he'd ever encountered in 10 years of working in family law. (I was not privy to a lot of the awful things my dad did that weren't directly related to me until recently and I'm very thankful my mom shielded me from the literal crimes he committed.)
My dad died in 2016, freeing me from his control but the damage was already done. I'm 26 now and have been in a much safer environment for so many years, but despite that I still struggle. It is incredibly hard for me to form memories while under acute stress which negatively impacts school, relationships, work, and so many other parts of my life. My triggers are unpredictable. I once had a very public breakdown after picking up a broom in a grocery store and two years later, I still have no idea why. I've developed hand pain from clenching my fists constantly without realizing it. And I don't want to think about some bad things that happened to me that I believe were the result of SA.
I know comparing trauma isn't healthy, but I cannot begin to imagine your pain OP. Nothing a four year old could do would ever warrant anything close to that level of violence. You were blameless. You deserved love then and you deserve love now.
Isn't that so strange how memory works sometimes? I can remember almost nothing that actually happened, but the feelings and the energy of the memory are so vivid.
mine either are vivid feelings/emotions with no actual memory of the actions, or a vivid memory of what happened while i’m entirely disconnected emotionally… sometimes things will trigger me without me noticing and i’ll only realise when i’m dissociating after
Yes!! I read recently about emotional flashbacks and I definitely get those a lot. This is a new diagnosis for me so I'm still learning, but I definitely have triggers where something small will happen, then suddenly my emotional response is wildly disproportionate. Like I'm not an adult woman anymore, I'm a terrified little girl begging for love and security and my emotional state is exactly the same as if I were that little girl. The fact that I'm in my 30s doesn't even exist in those moments.
thank you ❤️ honestly, anything can be traumatising. especially for little kids who know nothing but their parents :( i hope you are able to heal more in time
This is probably odd to say but the emotions in this are so relatable, so thank you for sharing. Especially being triggered by something and not knowing why. It scares me a lot, and sometimes I think back to those triggers and wonder what on earth happened, but maybe I don't want to know. And maybe if I'm still suppressing it then it's best left alone for the time being.
My mum was the abusive one and she never hit me (that I remember??) but she did abuse my sister. Nasty stuff. Not just wack-wack but really doing some emotional work while she was at it too. I imagine most physical abuse is like this, but people don't think of it I guess.
I also wonder how I'm 'so traumatised' despite not even being the primary victim, but I try to remind myself that I am valid either way. There is no bar of 'bad' that your childhood needs to reach for your trauma to be justified. What's important isn't what happened, but how it affects me.
These were just ramble thoughts, apologies. I hope they help someone if they feel the same way
Leave it to the Sims, the utlimate "Et tue, Brute?" moment LOL cause I was OBSESSED (and still go through phases) with the Sims as an escape too 🤣
In a way, my childhood wasn't that bad, compared to some people. My family was financially stable. I went on vacations. I also wasn't physically abused so bad that it did permanent damage (to my body).
But I also have to leave a lot of details out so that my family seems "normal" and so people don't ask follow up questions that have answers that they aren't prepared for. I just pretend like my father is dead at this point because any details about him disturb people, it's not like he's in my life anyway.
The strangest thing is that sometimes I feel guilty for being so affected by my childhood because my parents were good people WHEN they were good. I adore my father, even though I know he stood by while my mother emotionally abused me. We lived lower class but on paper, I had a good life.
But I leave out shit all the time. I casually mentioned to my husband about the time my mom forced me to pack a bag of clothes, call my aunt and ask if I could live with her because I accidentally left a crayon in my pocket and it melted in the dryer. I was 8. Or about the times she locked herself in her room for hours and I would wait outside while I could hear her breaking things and screaming. My dad would sit on the porch, drink beer and smoke and he and I would eat pretzels and mustard for dinner while she tore the room apart. My husband asked me if that was normal. I guess it is. Now I just don’t mention it to anyone anymore. 🤷🏼♀️
I try to not even look back anymore. It serves no purpose other than to make me upset quite frankly. Honestly, life can be pretty atrocious. There's a reason "ignorance is bliss" gets thrown around.
I wish I could stop , it’s like my brain is forcing me to remember and constantly be reminded.
Once I realized I had CPTSD it still took about 4 years to come to terms with the full extent of the damage I've suffered.
I find the consequences still hard to name. They pop up unexpectedly out of the blue over minor reminders all day long. I am still coming to terms with the extent. I keep reading others experiences and it has helped a great deal with naming and how to thrive through it all! I want to be a thrive! I think I am finally in good hands with T.
Nah my childhood was bad. I’m 29M and it still sticks with me. Whenever I see people my age or older act immature it’s obvious that they had an easier time. Like I try to remain stoic around others because people suck. I live in the UK btw the most passive aggressive and hypocritical people ever
So many memories I didn't think twice about. Then I had kids. They're so small so innocent. So fragile. So easily hurt.
I seriously think my mom wanted me to die "accidentally. Or be kidnapped.
At 3 , I was told to go outside and play. Alone. Out front , wondering the streets.
Or the time she took me to the toy isle and "forgot" me.
The lies I believed, that I no longer do.
Shitt everytime I get episodes of rumination it's just a deeper and deeper and deeper feeling of "Shittt that was FUCKED"
For decades I was proud that I didn't make a drama out of 6 years of CSA like all the other people who "were only raped once". I still think today that I basically had a happy childhood.
Yesterday I pestered my father again about the fact that they left me alone with a convicted pedophile back then, but above all that they didn't take any action when I told them 15 years ago. Just long faces and an apology. But no help, no: we'll deal with this now and get help. Nothing. So I thought, it doesn't seem that important, or I'm not worth it, let's forget about it.
If I really start thinking about my childhood, parts of it were happy, but 50% I spent with obsessive daydreaming on sexual stuff at a very young age. The CSA may as well have started at the age of six, looking at how often I would engage in sexual activities with the neighbor kids, girls and boys. Some of that seems to be normal, but in my case it was definitely way too much.
I got my first blow job at 5 from a girl that was four.
I have very little idea how or why we were experimenting. But we were. I feel like maybe there is a memory there I don't want to know?
Like how do kids that young even think about sex? And even though my mom caught us, where were the adults leading up to this?
That’s at least 4 years too early for same age experiments. So it’s quite possible one of you learned it somewhere, not the same age.
I always thought CSA started at 8, but I recall touching genitals with girls after swimming lessons in the pool or even standing in the queue. I was the driver behind that and I couldn’t have been older than 6 or 7. Also, I can’t recall when it actually ended. I can recall a thought „now that I have a girlfriend this has to stop“, and I had my first GF with 15. What a mess
Yea I once heard a therapist say something to the effect of “if you ever start to feel like ‘it wasn’t that bad’ ask yourself if you’d willingly let your own daughter be raised the same” and 🤯🤬😭
Awesome answer!!
My earliest memory memory was when I was about 8 (possibly younger). My mum was in severe emotional distress standing naked and blood dripping down her leg and crying. When I was about 18-19, I realised my childhood wasn't normal (I began using substance abuse at 16-17 emotionally abused by my mum and narcissist stepdad) and even still, there's a lot I have forgotten then suddenly remember as I get into my late 20s. That's only the tip of the ice berg.
Yep. Happens a lot for me when I'm telling someone about my childhood. Hell, it happened yesterday when I left a comment on a post about anxiety around new foods. I mentioned that my parents once threatened to hold me down and shove food down my throat. It sounds really extreme when I type it out.
I had a really hard time accepting that my life was That different than others, the only thing that really started making me realize was talking to other traumatized people. They started saying things like "you've gone through things I couldn't even imagine anyone actually doing to another person" and yeah that rocked me to my fucking core. I've always assumed that I had it okay and that others had it worse, because that's what I was told any time I would start talking about the really painful parts of my existence. I've been told "it's not that bad" by doctors, friends, therapists, councilors, and obviously my abusers. But the fucked thing was that they didn't let me open up, I would just begin being like "hey this makes me feel horrible when I think about it" and before I would be able to tell them hardly anything they'd be like "oh well that's pretty mild" I'm sorry I have to ease into my incredibly traumatic memories Brenda. A lot of us have been trained to stay quiet.
I thought it was all normal and everyone went through this stuff but I was just a selfish asshole for being suicidal and stuff responding to it, I was actually told that by quite a few teachers and different people, but I was at church one time and they got this guy up to talk about suffering and he talked about chronic pain and as I was leaving a family member to me that they thought I knew a lot more about suffering than them, and I clocked, hang on, I have the same type of chronic pain as him and way way more stuff that feels like nothing to me like I just force myself to get on with my normal life, but i thought everyone went through this stuff it never really occurred to me the stuff that happened to me wasnt normal. in fact I expected to by age 9, I definitely didn't expect to make it past 13 because I knew so many close friends and family members that died/ended their lives. but now thinking about it my friends all go home (I'm 16) and they shout at their parents and their parents will know they had a hard day and be nice to them, I could never do something like that mine are so sensitive, there isn't arguing 24/7 and my friends are so naive and wholesome but think they are so grown up because they got drunk for the first time or because they are gossiping. I'm jealous of them
Usually the stunned uncomfortable silence when I'm telling what feels like pretty banal childhood story gets me to pause and go "oh right. That's another fucked up thing that normal people would call the cops over happening once and it happened to me daily, gotcha"
Totally. I thought I had a great childhood because my parents provided everything we wanted/needed, had a nice house, did activities etc. Only after starting therapy did I realize that it was covering up the physical and emotional abuse.
I was the conditional golden child until I became the scapegoat in early adulthood with ADHD / 2E. With therapy and research (have you heard of youngism?), the realizations are still coming in waves now, esp when I recognize that I’m still being emotionally parentified.
Oh yeah that’s one of the parts of this disorder that I find the hardest. Like you have this moment of clarity and everything hits you all at once and the intensity alimost knocks u too the ground! It gets easier, than it gets harder, than it gets easier again! You know how it goes… but I have to say that as I’ve gotten older things are easier because I finally started to build relationships and I feel safer now and I have people to turn too that won’t abuse me and that took time but I can say you do regulate and you do improve!
I think it's not that bad because I think I dissociated through most of it and then pull up the dsm-v like "ah yes...I wouldn't have this and this and this oh and that too if I had lived a normal childhood"
when i turned 14, my family fell apart, and i started to realize everything i believed in was a lie. times have been so stressful since then that i barely remember anything in my childhood apart from small things and really traumatic occurrences. all i know is what my family has told me, what i wrote in my journal (which is not a lot), and what i used to tell other people, though i can't even rely on that.
Same. My earliest memory was at around 2 or 3 years old. its my mother standing over me and jumping (I can't remember if she was shouting too) because she was stressed and frustrated, which only made my meltdown worse :/
I used to want to think that when I still grieved a healthy family I never had; but looking at it on its face(and from literally every other angle w more and more context added) as an adult I don’t anymore.
Good news now is you are an adult and no longer beholden to something that never should have been and people who will likely never admit or realize their transgressions til they want to meet your kids or potentially be invited to your wedding. But it’s all within your control now who you involve in your life and to what extent. From experience, preserve that above all else. You are free now and idk if we heal but we can atleast learn to live w it and it not feel so bitter.
Yes I constant think was it that bad? But that is part of the trauma especially with gas lighting. You constantly believe you should be grateful and you feel guilty for accepting you have childhood trauma just like 90% of people. The denial is because you are wired to worship your parents no matter what. I was in serious denial for a while and my therapist kept telling me you have trauma and I said NO I DONT then I started talking and I noticed I was in a haze and floating. So yes that trauma is real and opening up will cause some dissociative symptoms.
If it's "normal" to you, then it's not a big deal, right? If you're raised being abused, it's not some high-drama TV moment.
I also wonder if school teachings had something to do with it. I have a vague memory of telling someone, "I'm afraid of my dad, but it's not that's bad; he's not beating me", because school taught me that kids who were being abused at home were being thrown against walls and showing up to school with black eyes. I was being spanked or slapped across the face, but I was never thrown across the room or had bruises so in my child-mind, it wasn't the same.
Similarly, when someone is raped by their high-school boyfriend but they don't think they were assaulted because, "it wasn't some stranger grabbing me off the street". Although I think this current generation is changing the narrative of what is abuse/consent/danger. I believe anyone Millenial or older will have a different reference of what constitutes abuse.
I went from going to saying "my childhood was warm and loving" as a mantra to having my therapist tell me not to watch a certain documentary about a house of horrors family cult in our country, as it would be retraumatizing because of the many parallels with my childhood and teens in a similar household. My siblings and I survived some of the worst psychological abuse with a mom who my therapist classified as psychopathic behaviourally, she got me under her spell even when I was going through therapy in my 30's for trauma related to bullying in school, she is a pathological liar and manipulator but it is all covered under evangelical Christianity and her claim of being a prophet who receives revelation from god as a way to control and brainwash. She would also diagnose any behaviour she didn't like as mental illness we needed to get treated for, me especially she was convinced was "wrong" and she whispered her poison in my ear so much it became my own quest to fix myself. It took me nearly 4 years after breaking contact with my parents to realise the hell she put us through, her quest to fix everything that was wrong with me, led me to actually develop chronic pain and fatigue due to chronic stress and muscle tension as my body knew the real danger was still around me til my mid 30's. When one child breaks contact she moves on to the next victim, to be her special child, but it means you are in a prison being kept small and weak so she can get whatever it is she needs from you to fuel herself. For a time I even thought she was just a helicopter mom who loved me through it all but she told my sister behind my back how much she despised me after basically ruining my life as I turned out very disappointing to her. I think our mind tries to protect ourselves from the truth sometimes because seeing the real monsters is too hard to deal with, especially as a child.
I go back and forth from “omg what I went through was so terrible, I am so scared” to “it wasn’t that big of a deal, idk why it would ever matter even if someone else went through it” my therapist says It’s my brain trying to cope with the severity. If it wasn’t that bad then it didn’t hurt and doesn’t affect me because it didn’t hurt and etc etc.
Every time my husband talks about his childhood I immediately go into flashbacks and horrible memories of the things I had compared to him. He made me realize just how much abuse I went through when I thought it was normal.
I don't think. I know. I carry the bad temper my dad has due to the ptsd. I can get angry for no reason other than a little bit of stress.
only the younger stuff because the abuse got too undeniable as i got older. i tell myself it got bad when i was 11+, but then i remember when i was in kindergarten or so and my dad broke things of mine and said 'oops, see, it doesn't matter, get over it" as i stood there and cried and asked him to stop - which started because he broke something of mine and my mother told him to stop because i started crying about it lol. and that's only what was done to ME, when i really dig deep to pre-school i remember shit like CPS coming and questioning me, me stuttering and cowering around him because i was so scared of him, and asking my mother why she was crying and hugging her for her to say "ask your dad" and asking him if she's okay while he laughed - which i still don't know what the fuck he did to her.
anyways i hate my father and i hope the absolute worst for him
Sorry that you went thru such a thing; I feel for you and I am right there with you.
I used to think "it wasn't that bad" but what if you don't remember much? There's a few good moments, but mostly blank prior to high school. I don't remember the beatings, but I do remember the plastic tubes for a "play tent" which I guess my mom used to break on my back. Also the time my twin brother and I were tied down on a chair and our hands burnt with a lighter because we were pyromaniacs. We were 9.
Have you found anything that helps?
Here's a good one you may be familiar with:
...things were bad, but at least I wasn't SA'd.
(Turn 35, start to wonder why you have EVERY symptom of childhood SA, start recovering repressed memories, learn about multiple family members who had the exact same experience from the abuser, start asking questions, gaslighting becomes evident, "Oh, it wasn't a coincidence mom would just open your door without knocking every time you were having "alone time" as an adolescent male", try to be intimate with your partner and then the flashbacks come, "that sure is an odd place on my body that just experiences pain and/or pleasure for no specific reason when touched", turns out I hate sex and always have even though I'm obsessed with it).
Huh...
Nope, people have to tell my my childhood was bad then I have to stop and think but a lot of what I had to go through was psychological and emotional, I rarely got hit and never from my parents (except for spanking but my mom stopped that at some point). Apparently they didn’t want to raise us the same way they were 🙄
Yeah, my reflections started with "I think it was just emotional neglect, probably unintentional, all my other needs were provided for." But then it went to "wellll if we're being honest there was in fact emotional abuse as well, both between my parents and towards me" and then "well ok the financial abuse was bad too but at least it wasn't physical" but then it's like "oh yeah there was that time where I had strep throat for a week while we were on vacation and they refused to bring me to the doctor and instead just got mad at me when I said my heart was racing and was feverish walking around the theme park" ...... like the fact that my parents don't "really" care about my feelings did unfortunately did permeate all elements of my life. Kind of duh but also, hard to look back on and begin uncovering all of this.
I was telling someone about my mom yesterday, and just how big his eyes got, how his WTF got louder and more indignant with each example of her disregard. Made me feel vindicated.
All the time, especially when I think back on one thing that doesn't seem that bad. Like my mom and her boyfriend used to joke that they wanted to wake me up for school by banging pots and pans near my head (I wasn't the best at getting up in the morning). Then they did it one morning during my summer break, on a day that I was allowed to sleep in. Looking back a few years ago I would think that's normal, like bully behavior your parents do when you become a teenager. Like my friends moms used to take their doors off their rooms while they were at school, it just seemed like bullying but not abuse.
Now I'm an adult and my friends have kids and my nephews are about to be teenagers. I'd never think of acting that way around them or TO them. If I noticed their parents doing something like that (which they wouldn't), I'd be concerned. I wouldn't find it funny the way my mom did... or her boyfriend did.
I can so relate and I’m so sorry this happened to you. I was around 4-5 when my dad beat me with a belt, leaving me with bruises. The rumination on this particular memory makes me so angry and sad at the same time for that little girl who didn’t know why she deserved such an awful beating.
I’m doing my first EMDR session next week in relation to this exact memory. Have you done EDMR? What healing methodologies have you tried?
If you ever need to talk please reach out, my inbox is always open.
Yup here. I thought I was normal since friends were going through similar things so when I was growing up it had to be "really bad" for CPS to get involved.
I remember watching Shameless for the first time and discussing it with a friend. She was disturbed by almost all of the topics and I'm here all, "that was literally my childhood."
i'm so sorry an item in the new sims pack sent you into a spiral, you are not alone. Everything seems to be sending me into a spiral lately.
I always seem to forget what i went through wasn't normal until seeing the look on people's faces when I talk about it.
yes. i’ve had so many experiences where i’m sharing what i think is a funny little anecdote about my childhood and then the people i’m telling are genuinely concerned like ‘are you ok’
Never. The opposite. When I hear about people who went through hell similar to mine, they are always in terrible shape, or deceased. I don't know where this resilience comes from other than knowing I was just an innocent child and they were/are evil. I'm thankful for an above average intelligence that helped me introspect and rationalize. I still have intense triggers and the worse part is they are common things I see, hear etc very often, like a baby crying/children screaming, a black and white checkered floor, motorcycles, every damn holiday, basements, water dripping (the loud plonk-plonk), etc..and torture. 3 Stooges type slapstick is OK but have you noticed how so many cartoons are about one relentlessly torturing the other, especially cats and other predators? I can't stand to watch one second of Tom & Jerry for example! If you don't say "poor Tom" you are a Jerry, but I digress...
Yes, downplayed it all my life. Just realizing how bad it was and no wonder I have so many problems.
I already had a CPTSD diagnosis and was in therapy for it, so I thought I sort of had a handle on it. ThenI started going through mandated reporter training for scouts and holy hell was that eye opening. Way to make me feel like it’s true no one cared enough to say anything when I had all the signs I’m watching now!
For a really long time I believe my parents were normal. Last year I started thinking about it and realize what they did was insane.
The worst part is when other people talk about their childhoods and you realize just how good ordinary people have it.
Frequently. My therapist has to remind me it was that bad.
The time I thought that at times is long gone. My childhood was torture.
I don't think that way because I know it was bad. I didn't really start thinking about a lot of it until relatively recently, and I am certain that is because I was disassociating, which is how I survived.
"It's not that bad, it's not like my parents [did one of the things I've seen on this sub]" then I remember it's not normal for your mom to verbally pretend that you don't exist as a punishment for not going to school.
My first childhood memory that comes to mind is watching my mom be pushed down the stairs by who later became my stepfather. It was confusing as a child because my mom did provide food, toys and clothing to her best ability. She did care and show love but she stayed with a person who was abusive and a disgusting human being. She put him before us constantly. My brain still has a hard time wrapping itself around that and that’s why I’m in therapy ❤️
I'm exploring this now in therapy. I remember so much, I know it wasn't great but could have been worse. Turns out, what I remember may have been the happy highlight reel. I'm not sure how to handle it.
when i first got diagnosed with cptsd i called my bf & told him i didnt feel like the verbal abuse was “bad enough” to warrant the diagnosis & that i felt silly claiming i had ptsd (when others have it much worse)…even though i obviously have all the symptoms🥲 lmaoo
dont remind me
No I always knew my childhood was a Lynchian nightmare
My earliest of memories stems from when my bio-dad thought it was funny as fuck to give me a bowl of my favorite food (ice cream) and then laugh hysterically because I cried my head off when he took it away from me. I was the ripe age of three.
Fuck him.
Also, same idiot thought it would not be traumatic for me to watch a horror film with the opening scene being a woman getting violated and decapitated by monsters. The air bubble that formed on her neck stump will be forever burned into my psyche. I was 4.
I’m still saying it wasn’t bad. It was just screaming and a lot of rage and breakdowns/tantrums when they didn’t get their way. But it wasn’t physical.
I started seeing my therapist in November and we’ve just begun to tiptoe around my childhood. I’m the only child and bear the brunt of the responsibility for both of my parents who had me when they were significantly older. My mother has serious mental health issues that were untreated so I was the source of her happiness and her hate. I lived life constantly walking on eggshells because she was unpredictable and my father was non-confrontational. I will defend my parents to the death but am learning to contend with the fact that saying “what they did to me was fucked up” does not diminish my love for them. I struggle with making space in my mind and heart for BOTH things. Because if I cannot be the source of their happiness (or ANYONE’S), who am I? I shove down my feelings and don’t make a fuss so that others can live easily.
Omg YES!!!!!
Then I remember details I've minimalized and am like - OH HELL NAW! THAT ISH WAS WRONG!!!!
Yes.
I'd rather not think about it. I don't want to get any more depressed... I'm too tired now. Exhausted.
Lmao Currently unloading and dealing with this in therapy. That what happened to me WAS horrific and I shouldn’t just blow it off because, It WaSnT tHaT bAd
I'm so sorry your dad did that to you. That is an awful thing to put a child through who can't even defend themselves. The PTSD reaction is incredibly valid.
My mother went by a nickname that she chose for herself, which is also a word that's "positive" and all too common, especially during certain holiday seasons. It messes me up every time, to this day.
I had an awful childhood that I don't think I ever see through rose colored lenses. I did, however, have a pretty messed up high school life that I constantly reminisce fondly of because my brain likes to block off the home environment I grew up in, the physical and psychological abuse by my mother who used me as a pawn in her divorce with her husband (not my dad) while I was dealing with double the schoolwork of my fellow classmates, principals and teachers who abused their power over their students, etc. Instead my mind remembers finally having friends I could go to and escape my home life, after years of isolation. But in hindsight, that was only several hours a week. That was a short vacation from an otherwise awful life.
I used to. But now, as an adult, I come on this sub and I read the things that happened to other people and I am appalled and horrified. And more often than not, I can relate. I have to be appalled for myself too.
Yeah. I’m just remember that my medical file says significant trauma history. I can’t really argue with that.
You're so not alone 💛 I am so sorry. My mother's favorite form of abuse was the belt. One of the first times she beat me was when I was naked and wet, getting out of the shower. I remember the lashes stinging extra badly because I was still wet. I was also around 4 years old when this happened. We can heal. We DO heal 💛 Much love to you.
I thought it was not bad because they took me to a nearby park when I was a kid.
I always knew my childhood was fucked up. My issue is that, until recently, I only assigned blame to half the perpetrators.
No. My childhood was objectively a nightmare and I was aware of that ever since I was a small kid.
I don't believe people who say their childhood wasn't bad but they have symptoms and wonder what's wrong with them. It's not like they're lying they're just in denial
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Often it's not until I'm explaining something to my therapist that I notice how horrific some of the things I lived through were, and I notice that my response to them is kinda flat. But the more I do inner child work and recontextualise the things happening to child-me like it was a third person, it becomes really fucking confronting all of a sudden. Like it becomes very clear that I accepted as normal a bunch of things that I'm now horrified that any child anywhere has to live through.