Saw DV as a child. Was my behaviour normal? * trigger warning*

[Cupofteaandbiscuits]

My parents were very physical with each other. My dad regularly hit my mum and once they even fought with samurai swords 🤦🏻‍♀️

I’m trying to move on from other trauma that happened but I have a question about my behaviour at the time if anyone would know why this was?

From a young age, if I could sense an argument between them brewing I would antagonise the situation and go between them and stir it. Looking back at this now I’m disgusted in myself. I remember feeling compelled to do it.

is there a reason that a 5-8 year old would feel compelled to stir it like this?

I think the best place to delve into this is therapy rather than a lot of unqualified people guessing on the internet

You were a child reacting to the circumstances you found yourself in. Maybe once you knew that the row was going to happen, you wanted to get it over with quickly, but whatever the reason, the adults are the ones responsible, not you. A child cannot make an adult fight . I can't imagine anything my children could do or say which would make me fight my husband physically, however angry I was.
This is not your fault, and in fact I would guess that you have been manipulated into believing you had agency here.
You may have felt compelled to act the way you did, but the adults were not compelled to act on it. This is not your fault.

This.
And don't be too hard on yourself. Would you blame any other child for this? I assume not.

I'm not a therapist but could it be something to do with hating the constant tension as a child so stirring it up as to try and 'get it over with' more quickly?

This is what I was thinking

I work in DA and this is a known response - OP may want to look up something called the cycle of abuse. Often the anticipatory "tension building" stage can feel intolerable so victims want it to be over with.

You were a child. You were not responsible for the DV.

You couldn’t stand the tension and wanted the fight to be over, you knew it was coming and tried to control it. Trying to get across the eggshells. Maybe trying to distract them from fighting one another.

I would say your response was one of very many maladaptive behaviours that children use in response to your parent’s maladaptive behaviour.

Your behaviour was your parents to manage, you were a child not the other way around. They were responsible for this not you. Your shame is their shame.

You were not responsible. 100%. It doesn’t matter what you did.

the logical explanation is that the tension of waiting for the inevitable caused you to try to speed things up. You had no impact on that. You were no more responsible for the fights than I was for the bruises my mother got when I got some crumbs on my placemat.

the adults were responsible for the violence. The adults were responsible for not taking the moments of sanity to escape and get you out.

Whatever the reasoning op it sounds like you were exposed to plenty that you shouldn't have been. At age 5 - 8 years old you could have been copying your parents behaviour, seeking attention because they were more interested in fighting than in you or as others have said feeling such anxiety you almost wanted to get it over with. What is important now is that you recognise that you are not responsible for their fighting or your responses to it at the time. How are you at dealing with conflict now?

I’m awaiting therapy. Last time didn’t go well and I disengaged. So now I’m back on waiting list. Thanks though

I am fairly confrontational in some circumstances and quiet and shy in others. There appears no rhyme or reason as to which version of me comes out!

I always witnessed DV I used to turn on my stepdad when he started as a deflection probably , you probably thought all of it was normal your cortisol would rise and you probably got an adrenalin rush from getting into the middle of it,

This is how cycles of behaviour Is repeated I'm not saying you would fight with a samurai sword but your brain chemistry and development was hindered by this uneasy and violent home.

Well I AM a retired therapist and I think this is spot on.
Good to know you are willing to try some more therapy OP. Find a therapist you like if you can, and that you feel likes you.
And forgive yourself for anything you might be blaming yourself for. You were just doing whatever seemed to make things safer, often for them as much as for you, or possibly for one of them.

Take very good care of yourself and I'm sorry you suffered in this way.

This might be worth exploring with a therapist op, especially if you find it impacting your relationships. It sounds like you're working hard to make sense of everything that happened to you, the most important thing is that you know none of it was your fault and that you seek support to make sure it doesn't affect your life now.

This sounds to me like a way to to control a situation that had you always being in fight or flight mode. By provoking them it was over and done with and you could begin to calm yourself. I'm not a psychologist by the way just my interpretation

Children find it incredibly hard to think ill of their carers, and often choose to blame themselves rather than the parents, when it is the parents fault.

This is because it's really hard to believe the people tasked with protecting you are bad, so it's easier to think you are bad.

Childhood memories are very unreliable - a study was done where people were asked as children if they were hit, if they were confident etc, and then asked when they were thirty the same questions about their childhood. There was no correlation at all, they may as well have rolled a dice both times to answer the questions. What I'm saying is it's likely you were actually far less provocative than you thought and perhaps a few memories of that (or maybe just one!) have clouded your view of your entire childhood.

It was never your fault, they should have protected you and they failed you utterly. Anything you did to cope was also not your fault, a child should never be subjected to that.