If a man does something deliberately nasty once a year to a child

[Oversensitiv]

Is that low level emotional abuse? If the rest of the time they mostly just ignore them or are a little snappy?

with no disrespect, your experience of the 80's doesn't tally with mine. I was hit fairly frequently by both parents throughout childhood (mostly 80s) - my mother typically used a kitchen utensil whereas my father used bare hands. This was common among my friends and normalised in the community - the parents that didn't hit their kids were the exceptions and were sneered at by those that did ("spare the rod and spoil the child" was a saying still used without irony). At the (faith) primary school I attended in the 80s we were beaten with a variety of implements - mostly leather straps, but also a slipper, and the headmaster had a cane. There was only one teacher who didn't hit the kids. Collective punishments were also used, so e.g. everyone in a class would be slapped when one person did something wrong. Regardless of the frequency, the threat of violence was always there. The message at both home and school was: comply quickly and don't answer back, or be beaten by someone twice your size.

I can assure you that if they had a similar upbringing they are not "fine". Their trauma just shows up in a different way.
For example my DP took 3 years to tell me what he wants instead of show me in terms of things around the house and we're still working on him expressing his needs verbally rather than just throwing a tantrum because people don't guess his needs.

@Oversensitiv no that's not what I mean. I meant everyone's childhood damages them. You don't have to feel silly about how you feel about it though. I have merely accepted the inner fear, doesn't mean you have to!

The very worst abuse I have received on here has come from discussions about historic parenting/smacking, from furious posters who are outraged at the idea that their parents might have damaged them.

They're not damaged, it was normal at the time, and if I don't agree then I'm blind, stupid, an idiot, a cunt, probably not really a parent myself, probably going to fuck my own kids up, probably going to lie about it, but they're not damaged and their parents did a fabulous job! What do you mean, why don't they use the same techniques if they don't cause damage? They're not even going to dignify my stupidity with an answer!

This is not true. Many 'talk therapists' are highly skilled and trained and do not just talk about the events over and over (which could potentially be re-traumatising) but are able to help someone learn to regulate their emotions and experience a different kind of quasi-parental relationship which can help them to heal. Many 'talk therapists' are also trained in Rewind therapy or EMDR which can help to heal trauma which is trapped in the brain. It's a question of finding someone who specialises in working with childhood trauma.

I do agree OP that Bessel van der Kolk's book is an excellent book with lots of different avenues to take. For instance, many people find that yoga is a good way to help you to regulate your emotions. In your childhood you were flooded with cortisol from the fear and neglect. It has affected your nervous system to the extent that you can't easily regulate it. A flexible nervous system in which you can easily move from freeze to fight or flight or social engagement and back again is the key. Deb Dana has some excellent youtube videos that explain this.

Please ignore people on these threads that say they were shouted at and they feel fine now. Their experiences are not yours. They may not have felt terrified. They may have had other corrective experiences from teachers/parents that may have mitigated it. They may have different nervous systems that weren't so highly triggered in the first place (think of those people who go bungee jumping for the thrill of it, whereas others can't comprehend of finding that fun or exciting). No one can imagine other people's traumas and how they feel about them. Dismissing how someone feels is therefore crass. Also it is very common for people with childhood trauma to believe they are exaggerating how bad is was and to blame themselves for not dealing with it. It does not mean that is true, it's just how the brain works.

I also recommend Pete Walker's book CPTSD from surviving to thriving. He has a website that also explains childhood trauma and how it impacts us today. The section on emotional flashbacks might resonate with you.

I don’t agree at all. Not everyone’s childhoods were like this.

My parents never ever:
-ranted and raged
-threatened to hit me
-tried to make me feel scared
-humiliated me
-ignored me

Yes there were boundaries and I was told off, but I was never scared of them and I was totally free to relax and be myself at home.

From what you’ve written OP it sounds abusive. It doesn’t matter that there wasn’t physical violence or that other people have gone through worse or similar.

I think counselling would be a good idea.

I don’t like describing people as “strong” or “weak” because I don’t think it makes sense and it blames the person for being affected by something. But it certainly is brave to address it and not continue to bury it.

@Oversensitiv You have nothing to be ashamed of. Respect yourself and your feelings, it is ok for you to be you, and it is ok for you to feel your feelings. It is safe. That’s where your strength comes from, knowing yourself and accepting who you and what has happened to you.

The only shame here belongs to your father. Try and sit with the pain. I think of my childhood pain as dark coiled slithery things that need to be brought into the light. They are not so powerful then. Even if you can sit with your feelings for 10 seconds that’s enough, to start to deal with them and honour the child you were, and give her the love that she deserved.
I hope everything is ok for you now, and you can start to process and heal. But absolutely NO shame, you’ve done nothing wrong.

Beautiful posts @ThatshallotBaby and @DuploTrain .

This post is very reminiscent of my own childhood. My dad had such a fiery temper and I have memories of standing in my bedroom a shaking mess as I heard him run up the stairs and barge into my room. Never physical abuse, same as you, but the fear was immense.

My dad is still alive and I have a good relationship with him, he has mellowed a lot and I think he struggled with kids, he couldn’t communicate properly and expected too much from us. He also has quite the selective memory and announced one day that he never shouted at us as kids and all he needed to do was give us a stern look. Me and my sister just about fell over ourselves with how delusional he was. So I know I will never get an apology so it’s something I’ve just had to “get over”

For me the lasting effect has been an absolute fear of upsetting anyone or doing anything wrong so I have quite bad anxiety. I try not to focus on it too much for the sake of my relationship with him now.

im sorry I don’t have any advice, but I wanted to at least tell you that I understand, and that I don’t think you are weak at all.

This wasn’t ok and shouldn’t have happened.

This person had issues which were absolutely nothing to do with you and which you couldn’t have controlled or changed with your own behaviour.

Whoever it was was emotionally abusive and wasn’t fit to be in a position of trust around children. No child should be on the receiving end of such vile behaviour and the way they behaved towards you was not ok and not your fault.

However you feel about this is valid – you are not being oversensitive.

It’s normal to find it confusing as by default as kids we accept our upbringing as normal. It can take a lot of work to unpick and separate out what was ‘normal’ from what was not ok.

Have you spoken about this person’s behaviour with anyone in real life?

@Greenberg2 I agree that not all talk therapy is inevitably unhelpful but essential to find someone who recognises and can help with CPTSD. I wasted 3 years and a lot of money with otherwise competent therapists who had no clue, and I didn't either. But that was around 10 years ago and childhood trauma seems to be much better recognised now. Pete Walker's book is very good.

You don't sound crazy.
From what you've written I think you would definitely benefit from couselling to help you process all of this.
They will be used to people being emotional so don't worry about that.
Good luck!

Your experiences in the 80s sound horrendous, I agree. But while this was clearly the norm for your community, don't assume that everyone everywhere had this experiences at that time, or even earlier.

I was born in the 60s so my childhood is 60s and 70s. I don't ever remember being smacked as a child. My parents were certainly not trendy liberals. They were traditional working class and they did not totally disapprove of corporal punishment. However they were fair minded people who didn't agree with hitting children unnecessarily.

At primary school I never saw corporal punishment used. At secondary the cane was used, on the hand, but only rarely as a last resort. Certainly teachers could get away with a cuff or a slap but again, it wasn't that common.

However they were fair minded people who didn't agree with hitting children unnecessarily.

At secondary the cane was used, on the hand, but only rarely as a last resort.**

Emphasis mine, just to make the point about how people still excuse it.

Bugger, the formatting fucked up. I'll try again.

However they were fair minded people who didn't agree with hitting children unnecessarily.

At secondary the cane was used, on the hand, but only rarely as a last resort.

Emphasis mine, just to make the point about how people still excuse it.

@5foot5 indeed I don't assume everyone's experiences were similar - where I grew up was decades behind other parts of the UK in many respects. It was (and is) geographically isolated, religious, with high levels of social deprivation. But your post said that by the 80s or 90s corporal punishment was rare in your experience and I wanted to offer a contrasting experience (not just personally but also attitudes/prevalence in the local community).
London primaries started phasing out corporal punishment in the 60's whereas some more peripheral parts of the UK didn't phase it out till 2003, suggesting a 30-40 year spread in when corporal punishment began to be viewed as unacceptable, even within the UK, depending on what part of the country and how deprived/religious/traditional the area.

Yes these are fair points. I assumed my school was typical, but maybe I am wrong.

It was a relatively new school when I went there. I lived in a very rural area and this was the only secondary school for miles. When it opened in 1961 it was as a brand new, state of the art Secondary Modern. It had just become a comprehensive in 1973 when I started and many of the teachers, including the head and most senior staff, had been there since the school started. Of course the head seemed older than God to me but he was probably only in his mid to late 50s,so he would have been early 40s when the school opened.

I guess it is possible that a brand new school with relatively young staff might have had a more modern attitude and approach than some. Interesting, I never thought of that before.

I am not excusing it. This was in response to PP who implied that it was normal for children to be routinely thrashed at the drop of a hat.

My point was that although most of society still accepted that corporal punishment was a valid option, most people, IME, did not dish it out to the extent mentioned.

"most people, IME, did not dish it out to the extent mentioned."

but if it's used, the threat of it is always there, regardless of the frequency. And it was not always fair or proportionate. So you'd have:
The threat that you'd be hit if you do something wrong
The threat that you'd be hit, even if you did nothing wrong (i.e. get blamed for something you didn't do, or be hit for something someone else did as part of a collective punishment).

In my final year of primary, the teacher's favourite trick to maintain the class's attention was to write something on the board then cover it quickly with his hand. If you admitted you didn't know what he'd written, you'd get one leather strap. If you bluffed that you did but guessed wrong, you'd get two. He was quite happy to dish it out, as were three others in the same school, one of whom hit a kid so hard he broke bones in his hand.

What extent is acceptable?

He sounds a lot like my stepfather. Everyone loved him. Life of the party. A rough diamond. Give you the shirt off his back.

As long as you didn’t challenge him in any way, or get in his way when he was in a mood. I experienced frightening rages, being ghosted in my own home for days. Weeks sometimes. And then he turned jovial and loving again with no warning. 🤷‍♀️ These were rare occasions.. but once a year is quite enough if we’re talking 15 years or more, right?

You’re just not equipped to deal with that as a child. You don’t have the words or confidence to challenge it. Then you grow up, and it all stops, for the most part. Because they know they can’t bully you any longer.

And <then> you have kids, and it all comes flooding back. How could anyone treat their child like that? (Or, in my case, how could mum not step up for me?) And it eats away at you for a bit. You either bring it up with your parents or you don’t. Either way, just realise that none of it was because of your shortcomings. It was because of theirs. They could have done better and they chose not to, for whatever reason.

You know that you’re going to do better. Love your children better. It really is that simple. No further counselling required if you <know> in your bones that the fault lies with them. You’re welcome ☺️

My brother was caned his very first day aged 5. Canning was normal in the 70s. As was throwing board rubbers if it hit an innocent it didn't matter.

I am sorry to all those who went through similar experiences and as well to those who were physically hurt

It can be a rubbish insidious scar where you don't really think about it for years but realise that it's done a number on specific areas of your self confidence.