If you had a terrible childhood, how much do you talk about it?

[Catslovepies]

AIBU to talk about my childhood which was pretty terrible? I know others have had it worse but in a nutshell:

• My parents divorced when I was 8 due to my father cheating, didn't see him much after that
• My mother became an alcoholic and a druggie with wild parties at the house, terrible mood swings, awful boyfriends, etc
• I was physically abused and was also neglected. My mother told me I was stupid most days and hit me and threw things at me from time to time
• I didn't get proper medical or dental care and wasn't given enough food to eat so quite malnourished
• I was made fun of mercilessly at school as I didn't fit in, didn't have proper clothes to wear, was painfully shy and awkward, etc
• Mum was driving drunk and had a terrible accident on the way to pick me up from school, spent 3 months in hospital, now disabled. I think about what would have happened if I'd been in that car...
• At the age of 13 I was sent to live with my grandparents for a year who looked after me well, then I went to boarding school
• Left home age 17, lived various boyfriends, managed to put myself through university working 7 days a week to pay bills
• Got a good education, well-paying job, married a lovely man, don't have children though as my parents made it seem like having kids was awful
• I have a sister, she's a wreck psychologically, I have supported her off and on and she lived with me for a while when she would otherrwise have been homeless
• Mum joined AA, got clean, Dad started showing back up, now miraculously after a lot of work on all sides I have a good relationship with both parents
• I grew up in the 80s, nowadays I think I would have been helped by social services, back then nothing. I grew up in the USA.

So on the outside my life now looks totally normal and easy. But it took a lot of work and luck to get here. Most of my friends and acquaintances have no idea because family problems just aren't talked about really. My friends who grew up poor talk about having been raised on rough council estates and make it obvious they have overcome adversity to get where they are. I grew up in the suburbs and everything was swept under the carpet and it feels like it's still there. So I feel a bit of an imposter and that I'm not being true to myself sometimes.

So AIBU - it's OK to take about where you came from and be proud of what you overcame
AINBU - Leave the past in the past, it's not polite to talk about these things

I had a horrendous childhood.
It involved starvation, being dirty total neglect and other things.
I got out. I survived.
I just don't talk about it.
I leave it in the past.
That's my coping mechanism to just leave it behind.

I don’t talk about it, I don’t feel the need to personally.

IME most people don't want to know the intimate details of someone elses misery unless it's presented as inspiration porn.

I mention events from my childhood, usually in humour, but never refer to torment of it.

It was only when I read a psychologist’s report that described me as having a neglectful and abusive childhood that I had any idea of why I felt sad about it. I knew I wasn’t loved but I thought it was because I was bad.

OP I’m sorry for what you went through and well done for making a good life for yourself.

It depends. I talk about it with my DH and best friend as it has left me with complex PTSD and other MH issues. When I have bad days I really need to talk about it. I wouldnt talk about it with anyone else though. That being said, i would never judge anyone badly who did talk about it. You can always minimise whats happened to you by saying things like " I grew up in suburbia so its not as bad as other people" the same as someone could say " Well I was beaten on a daily basis but there was always food on the table so it wasnt as bad as other people" A child should be loved and made to feel safe. That costs nothing.

I talk about mine to a therapist. Friends know about it in general but not details, partly because sometimes I'm fine talking about it, other times it feels like I've humiliated myself and prolonged the trauma by telling people. So, the therapist is a) a safe space (in the original meaning of that term) and b) can help me process the bits I'm stuck on.

I talk about it to my therapist. I don't really get into it with friends. It can get very 'me me me' if I'm not careful. My close friends know the headlines but I don't get into the detail of it with anyone but professional support.

I've heard people being really judgemental of someone for mentioning an abusive childhood. They didn't know how to handle it and felt shocked by it being dropped casually into a conversation. It puts me off talking about it altogether.

It isn't a secret and I will talk about it if it comes up in conversation, but I don't talk about it much. I am in my late 40s and my childhood was a long time ago. I am more interested in talking about who I am now and my adult life than things that happened 30+ years ago.

I don’t really, if my husband asks me something I’ll answer as much as I feel comfortable. But apart from that I don’t, some are dead, none had been in my life since I was a teenager, I have no wish to waste anymore of my life of people like them.

I hear most difficult childhoods now being described in terms of adverse childhood experiences. To some extent it's easier to refer to ace's than divulge difficult childhood experiences.
We did quite a few workshops on Ace's at work and I liked the distance it gave me from my difficult childhood.

I've found that too, @BusyBeaver. It's very common for people's kneejerk reaction to be either that it can't have been that bad, we've all had the odd row with our parents, or to think they need to ask you all sorts of questions about it.

I do talk about it with close friends, but in casual conversation I'd usually not bring it up. I think often you can fairly quickly get a sense of whether you're talking to someone who can relate - eg., a (fairly small) part of what was bad about my adolescence was my dad's homophobia, and I have plenty of friends who have had similar experiences, so we can talk about that.

I do find it very difficult when someone discusses abuse in a casual conversation, as if it must be an experience no one they're talking to shares. I don't like that. I do wish people would remember that abuse is actually fairly common, and not something that only happens to people who carry obvious baggage. One time a friend of a friend actually told me off for mentioning I'd had a rocky relationship with my parents in childhood, because he believed it was 'immature' to complain about these things 'when some people have experienced actual abuse'.

Similar here @Ownedbymycats - we have had ACES workshops at work (education). It was focussed on the students but a few of us pointed out we had these experiences ourselves.

I had quite an abusive childhood. I rarely talk about it now, but my close friends from childhood knew what I went through. When I was young I just joked about it. It's definitely impacted on my confidence to progress career-wise, but I don't share this with people generally. Don't want to feel like a victim as my childhood is many decades in the past now.

I've certainly found it useful although it's a little bizarre that we need labelling to make sense of child neglect or abuse.

I talk about it with my siblings when we get together. We're very proud that we got out and we made it. It gives us strength to ignore the calls and messages trying to drag us back in.

Never, buried in the past and that where it stays, I actively dodge any conversation about it.

I have had therapy and confided in DH and a best friend enough to have spoken about it and feel a fuck load better. And reading the book about toxic parents really helped me.

I think I will reference things as a whole if the context is necessary because I should not have to be ashamed, eg “my parents are both alcoholics”, or if I’m explaining some of my behaviour “it’s because my childhood was very chaotic, so I need order and organisation”. But I would not go into specific details so so bring it up otherwise.

as a PP said though, I would never judge anyone who wanted to. People have different ways of working through things.

I do really recommend therapy though. Just speaking and finding a way to frame things in your own mind is a comfort. As is external validation that what happened was wrong/you didn’t deserve it. That is important to hear. Read the toxic parents book.

Spoke about it with therapists which I found really helpful.

I think that people who had decent childhood/teenage years find it hard to understand sometimes that you might have chosen to have no contact with relatives for example.

Other relatives pretty much refused to accept that parents could have been abusive. There is also a lot of denial and hostility sometimes when you go public about what happened to you.

So sorry about all the awful stories here. My childhood was awful from age 6. Started with sexual abuse then went onto physical. I was locked in cupboards or tied to my bed with rope. We also had a dodgy babysitter who would play mummies and daddies with me and some of his friends. I was about 8 then and because of the abuse from stepdad this seemed like normal to me although I knew it was wrong. Then age 15 was raped by a friend of the family. Married a drug user. Left after our first dd was born. Then married a wonderful kind caring man and my life picked up. Weve been married 25 years now. I used to talk alot about the abuse, not all of it just snippets but as I got into my 40s I don't mention it now. I'm 49 now and it doesn't figure too much in my life as I've found a way to deal with it. The only time it reared its head was when my brother was murdered 16 years ago this summer and my abusive step dad was at his funeral and then bake for the wake. I couldn't understand my mother's thinking but as always I put my feelings aside. I hope everyone here finds some peace. I enjoy my life now and although usual ups and downs and I know the abuse shaped my personality in some way. I was a bit crazy in my 20s and 30s always wanting to fit in etc. Xx

I definitely think a large part of being able to move on and develop and grow is actually finding a healthy, loving relationship. Whether that’s with a friend or a partner. It’s really important to experience love how it’s supposed to be to understand you have value and worth. It would be nice to understand that on your own but I think that’s very hard to do, and so a lot of it is just down to luck.

I can't talk to family about it so I have a couple of close friends who know everything, because sometimes you just need someone who knows your whole past I find. I also give any new partners a very abridged version, as there are scars/quirks it's easier to explain rather than stumble on!

I don't really mention it in passing, though I have found quite an effective sign post for it: my father passed away and we were nc for 8 years before he passed (my late teens/ early 20s), I am quite open about that and I feel like it fills people in enough to know there is a history there. If anyone pushes, I say I had my reasons and leave it at that. I have had people try to pry for details and won't induldge them.

I used to talk about stuff a lot. I have learned it's better not to. When I first left home it was all I could think/talk about as I was trying to make sense of WTF happened. I don't feel the need to mention it these days and I have managed to condense it all into brief "elevator pitch" explanations for specific things e.g. why my school history was patchy.

If it still feels so fresh and raw that you can't help yourself all these years later, especially in social situations with people you don't know well or in professional situations like at work, I'd suggest getting some counselling or CBT as it sounds like you might not have processed it.

There are some extremely insensitive, nasty people out there who it's best not to talk about this stuff with and you never know who's like that until you say something and their response is something shitty like withdrawing completely or saying something like "IF that happened..."

They don't deserve to hear your story and they won't learn/grow from knowing it happened. I'd stick with only talking about it occasionally with very good friends or at times when it's relevant (or online lol).

I grew up being emotionally tortured and physically beaten until I lay in pools of blood. The evil cow told me my lovely father was an abuser ( he isn’t I love him very much now) and I was left to babysit a newborn at 7 yrs old. She was a drunk among other things . Very violent and I’m not sure how we all survived. I was then sexually abused by her friend and when she found out She threw me out. I was forced to live with a horrible older boyfriend at 15 and spent my teens working in prostitution and using drugs. I was beautiful and articulate and well read so I was able to do well paid, safer jobs like spending a whole night with one gentleman in a nice hotel rather than street work but it was still horrible and exploitive and has left me with some strange hang ups. I never made friends , I’ve never had a close friend and I never socialise. I fixed myself completely alone and managed to find a kind partner. I have a couple of degrees now and a published children’s book and I’m a fantastically loving and nurturing parent ( I’m a bit soft and they are pampered and spoilt) but I’ve never once raised my hand and rarely even my voice to them. Every now and then they trigger feelings within me of anger and confusion because in my mind it’s impossible to comprehend how my mother treated us the way she did. My younger siblings moved to be with their dad. My older brother is a hopeless addict and has abandoned 9 children in total now. I’m very fortunate to only be slightly messed up by it all. But I’ve never told a single soul , my partner knows some .

I've had a lot of therapy. I wouldn't talk about my childhood with most people. I talk to my dd, because she had a terrible childhood of her own. If I do talk about it, I've been prompted by something. For example, there was a mother on here who had come home to find her dh had gone out, leaving their ten year old asleep in the house. My parents left me, at that age, to look after my six year old brother overnight while they went for a night out sixty miles away. I talked with my dd about that. My dgd is ten, and we wouldn't dream of leaving her overnight.

I was just thinking about this this morning and wondering why at my advanced age I still can't think about awful things that happened in my childhood without crying. I don't talk about them because there is no need to but I wonder if I still cry because I'm just feeling sorry for myself or it's actual trauma?