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'm grateful you asked this actually as I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I don't talk about it.
And I wonder how healthy that is? My husband knows a lot (though not all) but there is no one in my life now who really knows, despite the fact that I would say I have close friends. But how close can anyone really be if they don't know anything about the fundamental building blocks that made you? When I was younger I tried to talk about it a few times but it was too painful to try to come out of denial to talk about it with people who would then try to down play it or assume I was exaggerating. It was hurtful and humiliating. So why don't I talk about it?

1. Having it downplayed is too painful


2. I feel like I'm being a drama queen and mememe if I mention it


3. I was taught never to talk about what happened at home - and that's hard to unlearn.


4. I don't want people to see me as a 'victim'. I don't want to be pitied.


5. I don't want people to judge me and see me through that lens


6. It was a long time ago and dammit I shouldn't have to be defined by it all my life.

I do feel uncomfortable that in a way I am almost dishonest in my life. It is like a secret I hold on to. Like underneath my clothes, my body is secretly covered in scales! My life seems lovely on the surface, and is lovely in so many ways, but I also suffer from cPTSD and have a lot of issues stemming from it all.

@ orangeisthenewpuce

I'm afraid it's more likely to be unresolved trauma, but you are allowed to feel sorry for yourself, especially if there isn't any one to tell you not to!

What was done to us is unrepeatable but from the day my mother died, the total eradication of having had any past was in many ways more damaging. Two of us where left disabled, and one missing entirely. I got on with it and obeyed a lifetime order supposedly from her, to not to find out more about my mother or where she's buried.
I've finally disobeyed. It's been decades, but I'm struggling with each step because I keep unexpectedly breaking down in tears. No actual reason, just keeps happening. I'm not even thinking about events, it turns out that just looking into names and dates is stupidly overwhelming. Think it goes with the territory.

I don’t make a secret of it but I don’t talk about it much. So I don’r hide that I’m estranged from my parents. I’m not ashamed of it so why would I hide it? But at the same time I don’t feel the need to trauma dump on friends and acquaintances because it isn’t appropriate and makes others uncomfortable. If I felt the need to work through it I’d go back to counselling to do so.

It's entirely up to you, and how you feel about it.

You could make the odd comment in passing:
'I'm proud of my resilience when you consider my childhood'
'I support my sister, we had an appalling childhood and she's not recovered as well as I have'
'It's hard for me to imagine a childhood like that, sounds idyllic!'

You could make a point of telling people you particularly trust and respect about it, in a bit more detail.

You need to feel safe though, and have a strategy ready for their response.

They may push for more detail, and you could respond 'I don't want to say any more about it, it's distressing/in the past' or tell them more, depending how you feel.

They may minimise, and you could respond 'I'm just glad we survived it- it was pretty risky'.

Perhaps you could have some counselling to explore how you feel about it.

You have done extremely well to establish a functional adulthood despite your experiences. Well done. The childhood you, deserved better.

It really doesn't matter if other people talk about their childhood or not. What is important is if you find talking about it helpful and if the listener is willing to listen

Almost never, and only to dp. It is a topic so personal it isn't for public consumption.

sounds like you want to talk about it but feel like you need permission. You can absolutely talk about it and maybe it will help someone. I think there are groups for adult children of alcoholic parents which may be a good place to talk through with others who understand.

I talk about my difficult childhood with my siblings. We mainly laugh about it now, but that's just how we cope. You've got to laugh or you'll cry. I refuse to let my mother's behaviour shape my entire life.

I'm open with people that ask about my childhood but I don't go into all the details and I'll usually frame any stories I tell with a comedy angle because I don't want pity.

I understand feeling like an imposter though. I live in a very middle class world with lots of mum friends that had lovely upbringings now and it's sometimes hard. I get over it though and think about how good it will be for my DC to have a great upbringing like theirs and know that they'll treasure the memories we share.

I also have an old school friend that had a difficult childhood and sometimes it helps to talk things through with him as I know I won't get a look of pity.

I talked about it with my husband and opened up in less detail to a close friend once. Apart from that I never speak about it and keep things extremely vague e.g my mum wasn't a good mum / we are estranged/ I had a traumatic childhood and early twenties.

My husband is the only person who knows that my birth father sexually abused me. I don't think I could ever tell anyone else that (although I obviously told my therapist everything but that was ten years ago).

When I did finally open up to a friend about childhood sexual abuse I got the impression that they don’t want to know. Which is fair enough because it’s not very nice, but I did feel a bit hurt.

I suppose you don’t know other people’s capacity for this type of thing though. I avoid people who want to ruminate on traumatic past events because it brings me back to my own childhood/listening to certain things etc. It makes me uncomfortable, especially if it is detailed or repeated, and I find most people who do this do it repeatedly. Going into your feelings about deeply traumatic events should be done with a professional in my opinion - there’s a reason why they’re trained to respond to these issues.

I avoid talking about it. I have felt a deep sense of shame about my childhood my entire life. Because of the way things happened, I have been blamed for things my mother did since I was 6. I experienced things no child should ever have to go through and since having my own children, I have stopped blaming myself. I am still very embarassed and feel dirty.

As I have got older, I have gone NC with every single one I needed to, I moved away from the area it all happened and I am fiercely protective of my own children. I married a man who has been amazing and has held my hand as I worked through a lot of my issues.

One person who did terrible things to me died. That was a partial closure for me.

As to the rest? Fuck 'em. They weren't there when I needed them. I don't need them anymore.

I had a bad time. I do talk about it when appropriate, but sometimes people don't want to hear.

I find it very difficult to talk about the abuse in my childhood because I feel there is still alot of stigma associated with talking about my situation.

My parents were lovely people, we had a nice home and food on the table however my younger sibling was diagnosed with asd and a learning disabilty from 2 and then later schizophrenia. There was 18 months between us.

Basically the only memories of my childhood are of the daily beatings from him to me and my parents, and he used to scream continually from 4am untill he went to sleep in the evening. He is also 6ft 7 and Im only 5,6 so he was just this towering domineering tyrant. Theres so many fucked up things he did to me, that I would be here all day. This was my entire childhood until I left home and I am incredibly traumatised as I spent my entire life walking on eggshells. My parents as lovely as they are and I knew loved me very much, were also the biggest mimimsers of thier sons behaviour and I was always told that he is the way he is and he cant help it so we just have to live in this hell.

I remember whenever they did have things on tv about people with autism/LDs and it was always presented in such a flowery way, and "autism is a gift" and any siblings would talk about how they love thier sibling to bits despite thier differences. It was just so far removed from the reality that I was living that I felt so abnormal. I felt so alone growing up and still feel the shame of speaking up about my experiences now.

OP, you’re right to be very proud of what you’ve achieved in life.

I’ve only told a close friend of the very mildest abuse in my childhood, I’d never tell anyone the worst. I feel some guilt as I think the family member might have gone on to abuse other children but no idea what I can do. Found out a few months ago that he’s dead.

To us all who survived the shittest childhoods, be proud of yourselves.

I like to think that talking about it in the right situation helped me distance myself from it and come to the realisation that I wasn't this awful excuse of a human being that I was being told I was.

It was shit. Utterly shit. It wasn't my fault, it happened to me just as much as DP can talk about how he broke his leg. Talking about it with decent people meant it wasn't that shameful secret that had to be kept because it was really my fault (that'll be the ex, a sibling and my mother talking there - not me). Why should I keep their shitty little secrets for them? They thrived upon secrecy and lies to give them the high and satisfaction of that feeling of power - well, they don't get it now I'm not that terrified, abused and vulnerable person they could bully and scare into silence.

The difficulty comes when people assume it's only a particular sort of child that experiences the aftermath and not fully grown adults that carry it with them one way or another. I've been at safeguarding training where they've thought it appropriate to re-enact a scene (and frankly, the way they re-enacted it, they clearly didn't have a scooby about what actually happens). Because I had been able to put some distance between what happened to me, in that I'm not ashamed, I could speak to them afterwards and explain why I thought that approach had been inappropriate without considering how some people in the room could be feeling as a result. Quite assertively when it was initially dismissed, as it happens.

It's part of me, but it's not exactly the most interesting thing about me (or to me). I'm not viewing myself through the lens of being a victim or survivor, it's nasty shit that happened, it still sets off some of my responses - I don't accept being shouted at by adults, for example; which absolutely took the wind out of the sails of an employer who was used to being able to get staff on their own and then shout at them until they cried - my quiet refusal to go into a room alone with them with nobody else around completely stumped them right up until they were compelled to apologise to me following my subsequent grievance (and I didn't have to disclose my history, it was purely that their behaviour was unacceptable and I knew that whereas others hadn't realised it was abusive because they hadn't experienced it before) -

But it's not the sum of my being. They're experiences, not my personality. I don't give them that power over the rest of my life. I learned from them. I learned to have utter contempt for adult bullies. I learned how to identify and as a rule avoid abusive behaviours. Just like DP learned to not go downhill on a skateboard without making sure he could stop after the experience of doing this and finding out that he couldn't stop upon reaching the little bumpy bridge going over the river in his village.

And to be honest, it makes day to day stuff a doddle in comparison. I'm not going to get upset because a teenager is being gobby or DP has snapped at me. I'm not going to panic and run away crying because I've been told somebody isn't very happy with my tone. I've dealt with far bigger and far scarier.

Talking about on here hopefully helps other people see that they aren't the only ones to have experienced abuse or neglect. I'm not using it for catharsis or because I'm 'triggered' - it's because it happened, I understand and it doesn't have to continue or become the only thing in your life.

One of my close friends said to me recently “You had a good childhood, didn’t you Blanka!” And I laughed in her face and said I didn’t remember much as it was so long ago

My father was an abusive alcoholic and my mother regularly shamed and verbally abused me. My childhood was horrible and I never, ever felt safe in my home. Their favourite game was ruining every special occasion by screaming at me or humiliating me. I was 27 before I had a birthday where they didn’t make me cry.

I tend to gloss over it and say my childhood was quite chaotic and I’m glad it made me so independent. Now I have children, I can’t believe how I was treated and making sure they grow up n a happy home has been really good for me too.

Therapist and close friends only - but I finished therapy years ago and barely mention it to my friends now.

I spent my entire 20s being judged/mocked/told I was awful for not speaking to them. I moved to the other end of the country for work, in my 30s, and since then I tell people that they’re dead, if I’m asked if I have any family

Thank you for all the responses, reading them has been extremely helpful for me, probably more than any other thread I've read on here. It's sad and shocking how common child abuse seems to be. I'd like to think things have changed a bit for the better however listening to the way parents sometimes speak to their children when out in public, on the train, etc it's definitely still happening. Plus the awful cases on the news...I think as a society we still have a long way to go, sadly.

Thinking through my desire to tell people a bit more, I think the reason I sometimes think about talking about it is because I crave validation - I want "credit" for what I've accomplished. For example, when my old boss used to say she grew up on a very rough council estate and had nothing, but that her parents were very loving and pushed her to succeed, I wanted to respond that I also had significant obstacles to overcome- but it felt taboo so I said nothing. It was clear she thought I had had an easy ride to where I was (having an American accent can I think also lead to that assumption). It got me thinking why is it OK to talk about some adverse childhood experiences and not others - it wasn't my fault and I should have the right to tell my story.

It seems from the responses on the thread that most think it's not that appropriate to talk much about it except with the closest of friends. It's trauma dumping, people aren't trained to deal with it, it isn't fun to talk about it, and if repetitive is very annoying. All those things are valid. I still think the taboo is unfortunate and unfair but it's definitely there.

However - I've thought some more about that craving for validation and I think it's actually an unhealthy coping mechanism from childhood. Doing well in school was the only way for me to get positive attention and praise, which is why I accomplished so much. I still think I want that praise from strangers....but the difference is I don't need it anymore because I have real love in my life now. Maybe time to let that need go.

Never drop your Mooncup .Wow that sounds really tough .You have been incredibly brave . You sound so strong .I am glad you have a happy life now with your DH and Son .So good that it hasnt defined you

I had an extremely similar childhood experience to you OP. My dad died but that’s probably the only difference I’d say. It’s awful and traumatic and really sets you back because you don’t begin life at entry level, you’re already behind.

I talked about it a lot but as a kid but only because my friends all knew and were there as I went through it. Only people who weren’t close to me ever used it against me.

After that as a teen or young adult, I found people either didn’t care, thought I was lying, or tried to out do me with fairly standard and normal child experiences so I’d would feel like I was being dramatic or I’d feel invalidated.

Now I only bring it up when it’s relevant ie at work recently it turns out I make a particular type of food very differently from everyone else - as we didn’t have ever have any milk so I always thought it was made with water. I was with kind people who knew a bit about how it was, so I got a hug and we all laughed and that was that.

No one will really understand. Especially if you carry it well, they just assume you’re lying. Until people meet my mum, they can’t understand.

After years of therapy, learning and coming to terms with my childhood and past - I'm ok to talk about it. An open book, if you will.

I don't go around telling all and sundry, but I'm no longer ashamed to share it, if there was an appropriate moment.

Trouble is, no one in my life, has ever really experienced hardship and troubles like I have, and they just don't understand.

I don't only to people who have been there too . People tend not believe you or think they can bully you too

That's true, @Miilkywhitemoonlight , or they think you're just attention seeking.

Both DH and I had awful childhoods. I think that we went over the bare bones when we felt confident/trust in each other, and the odd conversation since but it's firmly locked in a box in my head 99.9% of the time. He's the only person that I've ever told about it.

We both made a vow when we had our own DC that they'd never know pain and misery like we both did. And I would like to think that we've made that happen.