Why does my childhood trauma feel like it is MY fault and make me so ashamed? Aibu?

[fuckanxiety]

I have a whole mixed bag of trauma, from some difficult life circumstances mashed up with some deliberate cruelty. It just doesn't seem like it was bad enough to have impacted on me but it did and I'm so angry and ashamed of myself?

I have had one abusive relationship and then another not quite abusive but murky relationship. Both a long time ago now. Pleased I got away. Again though I feel so angry at myself for getting involved with those people and for what happened?

I have a good relationship and life now, am great at self care and doing enjoyable things for myself. The problem however is I cannot feel compassion for my small child self and young adult self, I just feel embarrassed I was so pathetic. I am so angry at them (me) for not being clever enough to be somehow better at life back then and now I'm stuck with awful memories of it all

Aibu? Am I just weird and broken? Why can't I emotionally accept things were just a bit shit but they weren't really my fault? I need to stop being angry at my younger self. The anger is corrosive.

I’m sorry for how you feel but without specific facts it’s hard for anyone to grasp what you care trying to express.

I'm sorry, what sort of facts should I include?

You need to forgive yourself, you were younger and life teaches us lessons. It would be worse if you didn’t learn. Be kind to yourself

It is worth trying EMDR op. I really struggled with my past and compassion for myself before but am much better now (not perfect but is anyone?)

EMDR sounds really interesting. I am glad it worked for you @Hopingforno2in2023

It's just shit and hard. But it's not your fault. Hold the head up and be proud that ypu've got this far in spite of it all.

@fuckanxiety there is a really good podcast called insight. It looks at peoples personal stories, talks about narcissistic parents and allows the person featured to realise that as a child they were not to blame for adults behaviour!

What are you talking about? We don’t need specifics.

OP - it sounds like you would benefit from talking to a professional - teasing this out and working it through.

Look up Mary Toolan and her work on scapegoat child recovery.
I think this would really helpful for you. Go easy on yourself and your inner child 💐

Anxiety from childhood is so hard. You don't realise you have it because you've lived with it your whole life. And then it eventually bites you in the arse.

Because you haven't passed the shame or blame on to the perpetrators. You were a child and the perpetrator made the choice to inflict what ever they did on you. If they were an adult they had s responsibility to look after you not traumatise you. Same with you being a young adult. You were not and are not responsible for their actions. You were a vulnerable adult and they are to blame.

The shame and blame is theirs and you need to pass that on to them and away from yourself. Be kind to yourself as hindsight makes us believe situations could be or should be different but when you are in the moment it is not that easy

Thanks for this x

My bastard father died before i could blame him. I resent him for that.

The OP really does not need to share the details of her traumatic childhood for people to understand what she's trying to express. She has articulated things very clearly in her post - she blames herself for things that happened to her when she was a small child and for the subsequent effect on her life, and feels guilty and ashamed about it. The nature of the trauma is irrelevant to her question; it is enough to know that she had a traumatic childhood.

OP - I think what you're experiencing is very common for people who have suffered childhood (or adult) trauma and/or abuse. Bad experiences in childhood can absolutely cause self-loathing - a lot of people find it hard to accept that they deserved better from the adults around them. Plus, if your childhood was abusive or neglectful, that does tend to cause issues with boundaries or low expectations in later life, because you end up without much of a benchmark for what a healthy loving relationship looks like - again, absolutely not your fault, but I think a lot of people who have been in abusive situations get angry with themselves afterwards.

I did not have a traumatic childhood but as an adult I did live through an extremely abusive and dangerous situation, and I also feel angry and guilty at myself about that at times. If someone else had gone through the same thing, I would be telling them (and truly believing) that it wasn't their fault and that they were the victim and the only person at fault is the abuser - so I really don't know why I judge myself more harshly than I'd judge anyone else. But I think it is not unusual.

You know that you have done absolutely nothing wrong. You have no reason to feel ashamed. I'm really sorry that you're going through this, and I think counselling or therapy could probably help you work through your feelings and overcome them. You are not weird or broken, I promise. You actually sound very perceptive.

It is absolutely not your fault. I work in child protection and unfortunately this is not uncommon. It is complex and engrained. Often children are made to feel at fault by the adults whose job it is to protect them- it deflects from their own failures. As a child you would only have been able to make sense of your experiences with the emotional intelligence of a child, more importantly one who has not had positive modelling and probably had lots of anxiety/trauma/attachments issues.

Ultimately the adults who let you down are those at fault and however your emotions are hard-wired, this is not your fault. Childhood abuse and neglect goes far beyond childhood, even if children are removed to a place of safety. At the time your brain was developing, you were learning about relationships (and hopefully in childhood your closest are positive and nurturing) - you did not get what you needed.

It sounds like you are in a more positive and stable place. If you are open to it and feel you can manage it emotionally, you are in a better space to get support around understanding what happened and to make sense of it. Have you have any emotional support?

I will not pretend access to counselling etc is easy to come by these days, it is a bit of a lottery, and it is very much a personal choice. Some people never feel they can go back there and open it up again. However, EMDR, CBT etc. can really help managing feelings/anxieties /triggers in these cases. Best of luck OP, from your post it sounds like you have come a long way despite everything. Allow yourself the credit for that.

This is a weird and unnecessary reply.

OP I agree with others EMDR all the way.

You were groomed from a baby to think that an abusive environment was normal. So that became your comfort zone. Because, obviously, part of an abusive childhood is being brainwashed into thinking it would be much worse if you had different parents, and the world outside was a terrible place that would destroy you in a eyeblink. You were taught to fear everything different from the normalised abuse that you grew up with. Grooming job done when you think being abused is safety and anything else is a terrifying unknown.

So, you grow to adulthood and lo and behold, you seek out an abusive relationship because that’s what you’ve been groomed to associate with safety….after all it could be worse! And anything different from what you know is terrifying.

The devil you know.

So anger is good, you should be angry at your abusers but directing that anger inwards and cutting yourself down, calling yourself stupid, weak, pathetic that is quite simply more of the grooming that you have yet to unravel. That’s an old internalised message that childhood abuse has made you feel the whole I must not be loved because I am unlovable. I must deserve this. It’s an old old bit of brainwashing done to you so that you always always do not blame the abusers, but yourself. This you need to unpack and let go of, you were tiny you had no psychological defense, no mental boundaries against such grooming. You cannot be held to blame in any way.

You should be proud of yourself, all that brainwashing and grooming from a small child it creates a massive cage, a mind prison that traps you. It takes massive strength and resilience to see abuse for what it is, to break free and to build a better life for yourself. Feel the anger, but direct it outwards. You are powerful. You are amazing, you can even break the cycle with your own children. Don’t ever be angry at yourself for what you survived and overcame.

Something that helped me was to look at a photo of myself taken at the age when I was abused, it really helped me to see that I was just a little girl, instead of the old head on young shoulders I imagined I was.
As an adult I used to beat myself up constantly for social anxiety. Now I know what caused it I'm much kinder to myself. I still struggle to do nice things for myself though so you're doing better than me on that score lol!

I saw a counsellor years ago when going through a particularly difficult time brought on by some childhood issues and said to her basically what you've said here.

She made me see that the abuse wasn't my fault, my F & SM were the ones who should feel guilty and ashamed and no child is at fault for the abuse they suffered at the hands of their parents. Would I do what they did to my children? No because I'm not an abusive arsehole. None of it was on me. I not reacted to what they did to me and it probably wasn't a normal reaction but I didn't know what a normal reaction was due to their abuse.

I slept around, wanting love, thinking sex was love, the same thing led me to have abusive relationships because to me that was a normal relationship. I stole from them because I had nothing, my SM used to take the money id made babysitting to spend on my SBs and leave me with nothing, wouldn't buy me tampons or shampoo. There was mental and physical abuse too. All things id be horrified if my children did but they don't need to as I've never abused them like my parents did me.

You weren't pathetic at all, you were surviving the only way you knew how to at that age.

Do not feel ashamed. Feel empowered that you've broken the cycle, you've done it regardless of their abuse and that's a far greater achievement than those with normal childhoods achieving normal lives.

hugs mind yourself x

When I look at childhood pictures when my mood is really dark, or even think of myself as a small child, I am incapable of feeling compassion though. It's disturbing.

I look at that child and feel something close to revulsion and shame, on bad days. I just want to get away from her.

On better days I enjoy seeing all the family photos including myself and enjoy remembering the genuinely good stuff. I can look at that little girl and feel happy remembering the things I was good at, like oh yes I was the best in my class at X. That feeling of achievement seems to be like "paying the rent" to deserve to exist, it means I wasn't totally pointless and is a good antidote for shame because it helps to remember I was good at something.

Bollocks, anyone with an inch of empathy can understand what OP is expressing, you're just fishing for juicy details (or are rather emotionally stunted).

I think it is normal to feel cringingly embarrassed about some of the things we did/mistakes we made when we were younger. It is the way of the world.

Please don't beat yourself up about it - you are on the right path now!

Says what I was going to say