That you never get over a bad childhood

[LadybugsAndSunshine]

Those of you that have had terrible abusive childhoods, do you think it ever leaves you.. The Shame or the sadness.
Im 43 now and I am happily married with my own now adult son but I still think about it a lot, At least 3 times a day a memory will drag me back in time.
It seems so unfair that the first 18 years of your life cause upset for the remaining 60.
I’ve had therapy and I’m no contact, I can manage my reactions to these feelings better the older I get but it’s hard, is it just me or do others feel the same.

Yes, you can – I can say this from someone who would once have been a regular in the Stately Homes thread, and as someone who works with people like me, and you. Childhood trauma stays with you because it is something the child could not rationalise when it happened, and by the time you are mature enough to try and figure it out there aren't ever going to be any satisfactory answers. That's what I do – allow the mind to stop trying to find a solution.

Yes! Recently my parents were supposed to be coming to stay with us for the weekend, the week before my husband was rushed into hospital and ended up having his appendix removed, my parents made all sorts of pathetic excuses why they couldn’t come, I begged them to come and help me with the children and eventually my aunt told me they hadn’t come because they thought if my husband was still unwell they wouldn’t be able to go into our bedroom to use the en-suite and they’d have to shower over the bath instead. I just can’t imagine a situation where a normal mum wouldn’t rush over to help when her daughter’s husband is in hospital. It just brought it home how self-centred they are.

What is it you do, EMDR?

I suppose it depends on the nature of your bad childhood but I've moved on quite well from mine. A therapist might say that the hard emotionless shell I had to develop to get through it has also helped keep me from being traumatised by it as an adult and they might be right, but if it works it works.

It's shaped who I am but everyone's a bit messed up in their own ways, I find. I'm lucky to have got far from it (physically, psychologically) and proud that I've done so. There are lots of good things to enjoy in the one life I have and I'll be damned if what happened 35 years ago will prevent me enjoying them.

No, remedial hypnosis.

It's one of those things that is always there, and sometimes it leaves its mark on you for life (e.g. having issues with trusting people, or maintaining relationships and friendships, or in my case, just not really liking people very much).

I find that the bad memories crop up a lot more frequently when my anxiety is heading into overdrive. I have spent a lot of time thinking about it over the years- I work on my own most of the time, so I have a lot of time to think about such matters- and I do question how someone could act like that towards a child. Sometimes the conversation crops up if family bring up that parent, or when people ask about my family and the inevitable ones that come when they find out that a parent is dead. They look very shocked when I say, "No", and then I have to explain why.

Now that we're heading towards a new academic year, I'm finding memories of my own time of leaving high school cropping up. Sometimes I work with students who have recently left, and sometimes they tell me why they hated it, and bullying is common. On top of what was going on at home, I had bullying issues to deal with. and still question how and why we still have bullying incidents (e.g. a teenager also experiencing people trying to set her hair on fire) that don't get dealt with. Sometimes, it makes me wish that I'd said thank-you to the few teachers that made me feel a little bit safer at school (but I appreciate that I haven't seen most of them since, they might have forgotten teaching me, and it would be weird to bring it up after all this time).

I tried counselling, but it wasn't for me, so you might have to hunt around different therapies to find one that suits you. Personally, one of the best things for me was moving far away from where I grew up. It gives me a lot of space from the reminders. Other than that, I try to fill my life with things that make me happy, because the mere fact that I am alive and well (minor MH issues aside) is the best revenge that I could ask for.

Good luck, OP.

I wonder if women are disproportionately affected by childhood abuse as we often end up in abusive relationships/marriages? That thing about becoming people-pleasers, with shit (or non-existant) boundaries, and zero self-worth. We are walking disasters waiting to happen.

It takes a long, long time to unpack all that. I'm guessing many never do.

I'm in my 60s and it was only in later years that I began to understand what had happened to me. I didn't even have the language to describe it back then.

There are so many excellent resources and support services out there now which is a godsend.

I could have written the OP a year or so ago. I feel for you; revisiting the past is incredibly painful and it isn't always clear on the triggers that take us back there. I have found over all of my adult life it creeps up during time of normal life stress; but sometimes hearing a specific song, seeing a specific person, smells, sounds, even certain buildings can be incredibly triggering.

I went NC with every single person involved. Gradually. It took me years to really let go. People died and as morbid as this sounds, for some of it, that was the closure. They definitely couldn't hurt me any more.

I decided early on my life and my children's lives would be so far removed from my childhood; I married fairly young-met the most amazing man who is my anchor & everything-3 gorgeous children, and I just value every day as it comes, another day without the pain of the past.

Don't give yourself a hard time on those days that you think about the past, its part of healing and processing. I do it too. I also wrote a very long letter, never posted, to my mother, who caused/allowed much of what happened. It was cathartic.

I just remind myself every day, I am safe now. Everything I have I earned, I built, and no one can take it from me. I am fiercely protective of my children and I 100% know that they will never know the experiences I had, and I take pride in that.

Breaking the cycle should be praised OP, be proud of who you are, what you have overcome and how strong you are.

I also don't give it headspace, I did have issues with alcohol in my late teens. I am considered by those that don't know me well as a bit of a battle axe. I stand up for myself & those who are unable to. It is my armour. However to my very dear husband & close friends, I am a big softy. I met my husband when I was 20, he knows all about my quite frankly dreadful past. Is my biggest champion & I his, we were both very broken when we met. 35 years later we are happy & very settled. Everyone's trauma is different. But I would seek some help, to not forget, but put behind you & move forward. Yes it happened, but do not let it define you. As I believe that means your abusers have won.

Every since I left home my life has been better. Even when it's difficult, it's still so much better.

I find it hard to see my siblings or relatives at all though, because I associate them with the bad times. It means I avoid them, even though they were not the problem.

I know it's not healthy but I have firmly and definitely pushed it away into a dark corner of my mind and my life is better if I never ever look there.

I'll be fair sometimes I can't look my mum in the eye as I'll remember something and I don't trust her alone with my children and if I was to pass away I'd not want my mum looking after them. That says it all really. Yanbu you never get over it.

After a lot of therapy I would say I've more or less come to terms with it.

Strangely the bullying and isolation at school were harder to deal with and left more of a mark in some ways.

Mine wasn’t that bad but I still often find myself wishing I could get another go at it!

YANBU OP, be kind to yourself

I think the best thing I’ve learnt is you never get over it because that implies there’s a destination to reach, something that can be fixed. Nothing about your past can be fixed or changed, it just is.

You can learn to live with it though and that makes it easier. I struggled with my mental health a lot when I was younger and my eureka moment was my much older cousin having therapy. To me, she had it all together but she still had things to unpick from her childhood traumas.

I view myself as an onion now; you do the work to peel off the toughest layer and then when you get comfortable enough you realise there’s another and on it goes.

It took me a long time to get to the point where I decided that my parents had ruined my childhood and early life and I was buggered if they were going to ruin the rest of it.

I try not to dwell on the past as I don't see that there is any advantage (to me) in feeling bitter. I am not letting my past damage my future. I'm just grateful I'm not forced to live with them any longer.

For around 20 years, I used drink and drugs to try and block out my childhood.
Getting sober was the easy part.
Working on myself and starting to process unpleasant memories was...tough AF.
There's still a lot that affects me to this day, but maybe I Iet memories have too great a hold over me?

That’s so sad x. I can really relate to your post. Bullying in adolescence leaves you with deep, deep feelings of worthlessness and fear. I’m 48, yet even now I wince if I see people laughing. Though I know they’re not laughing at me, my gut/emotional reaction is to tense up. Bullying has also left me cynical about human nature. I can still see the delight on other kid’s faces when the bullies were humiliating me.

I had a shockingly bad childhood; think sexual abuse and emotional abuse and gaslighting and lots of secret hiding within my family.
I never, ever thought I'd heal from it because of the enormity of it and also because it took years to see results from my substantial efforts.
After alot of help from various therapists (none were terrible, most were good, the frustrating part was waiting times for NHS provision), and presenting my intensely shame ridden vulnerabilities which was excruciating at times I am healing at a good pace.
I unfortunately have to pay for 2 private therapists per week but they are very good and target my needs. They are very proficient and have very good knowledge and they are very trustworthy.
Finding the right therapist is so important and will change your life if you are willing to work hard (probably in ways you never thought you would have to).
Carefully chosen YouTube channels and content can help you and also relevant books on healing from your specific problem (ie. PTSD, borderline personality disorder, sexual trauma) are incredibly useful.
If it is proof that anyone can heal with the right input, it is me.
Even therapists have said 'you're not progressing as we'd hoped', to me, and it took a long time to be visible to myself also, but miraculously, I am.
Depending on how deep the trauma is, and the type, and how complex, healing can appear as 'two steps forward, one step back' but I'm moving beyond that phase even.
Glen Patrick Doyle on social media (Instagram and Facebook) is a very good choice if you follow any accounts: he's a survivor of child abuse himself, but he's gentle and realistic.
His outlook has really helped me when I didn't think any social media would particularly.
Carefully chosen reddit content can also be very beneficial.
I wish you the best xxx

I do the same, if I find out two of my daughters friends met up in the holidays without her my initial reaction is ‘the mums don’t like me, I’ve been left out again’ and when I met my husband and he had such a nice group of friends, who are all confident and friendly, it was a revelation to me, I’d never experienced that before because my entire childhood was just bullying, sadness and feeling lonely, scared and humiliated.

I think it's completely individual according to the person and the situation. I'm the person I am now because of my childhood and I'm very happy to be me. I don't blame anyone, my parents did the best they could and it was a different time.
I've no shame and no sadness, in fact I don't think I was ever sad, for me it was all anger. I worked through it and consciously let it go. I rarely if ever think about it now, and when I do it's really about recognising I'm great now partly as a reaction to how bad it was then.

I don't know if anyone can relate, but my childhood left me craving refinement and good manners. Actually, that was what first attracted me to my husband.

When I look back, my main memory (apart from fear) is ugliness. Ugliness, ugliness, ugliness. It wasn't just the ugly buildings. It was the ugliness of the people – the greasy hair, rotten teeth, beer guts, etc. I spent my childhood surrounded by ugliness. People spoke in ugly accents, expressed ugly opinions, and made ugly jokes. Every other word began with an f, and hardly anyone could string a sentence together. To this day I can't bear the sight of the Sun newspaper because its ugly vulgarity puts me right back there. Another thing that drove me insane was the ignorance. Nobody knew anything, and nobody seemed interested in anything.

When I first went to dinner at my husband's house, it was like entering another world. His parents met at Cambridge University in the 1960s, and he had three siblings. Not only was the house beautiful, it was happy. They loved each other so much, and you could sense that love the minute you walked in the door. The whole atmosphere was different. No one swore. No one shouted. They spoke in quiet, calm, refined accents, and my god they were so eloquent and interesting. I'd never heard people speak like that before. I didn't know people could speak like that (think Stephen Fry on a good day). There was a bottle of wine on the table, and a jug of iced mineral water, and they politely asked one another to pass the salt or the bread! God, it was like walking into heaven.

One of his sisters was into literature, and I remember the mother turning to her at dinner and asking "how are you getting on with Pride and Prejudice Soph [her name was Sophia]?" Then they had a discussion about Jane Austen and the Brontes. I know that makes them sound like one of those ghastly, pretentious families, but they weren't. They were funny and self-mocking and completely unpretentious. It was just natural to them to chat about novels and poems at the dinner table. My husband's brother was even learning Russian!

I remember going home that night and feeling a kind of rage. It wasn't that I resented growing up poor. It was the crudity and ugliness I hated. To this day I have nightmares about that horrible housing estate. I remember men leaning out of transit vans when I was a teen and shouting "show us yer tits," and all laughing, and I remember dodging down alleys to avoid various scumbags or perverts or weirdos. But my main memory is of noise, especially at the weekends – just endless drunken screaming and shouting.

One of the main legacies of all this has been a love of silence and beauty and refinement. I have done all I can to surround my children with beauty. I read them the Narnia stories, took them to art galleries, and tried to speak to them as calmly and pleasantly as possible.

I can really relate to what you are saying. I grew up on a council estate in Greenwich, I don’t know if you know it but it’s in a part of London where you end up in a school with children who are from the same poor estate as you but also children who live in 3 million pound houses overlooking the park.
Even on the estate I lived on though I was very aware we were living differently to everyone else, I was so ashamed of my home and family.
When I had my own child there were things that were really important to me that I think other people don’t really worry about because it’s just normal, things like.. Always having matching bedcovers/curtains, always having a full fruit bowl, reading books, making sure that they had regular dentist checkups, waking up with enough time to shower/ get ready in a calm manner, saying the words I love you.
Another big one for me (sorry if tmi) is making sure me and my husband’s sex life is discreet. I was surrounded by noises that children have no business listening to, my mum and whatever boyfriend she had at the time. I hated it and it was something else I was really ashamed by.

Oh yes, I can relate to all that OP, though my school didn't have such a mix of kids as it's reputation was so bad. It wasn't until I got to my sixth form that I met kids from wealthy backgrounds. The thing that really struck me was how confident they were. I sat next to a girl whose father was a surgeon and whose mother was a headmistress. You could tell that she'd been raised by people who were used to giving orders and being respected. My father could barely read. Children definitely get their confidence from their parents. If you grow up watching your parents speak loudly and confidently, it rubs off.

One good legacy of my childhood is that it's left me with a passion for knowledge and learning. As a kid, I was surrounded by ignorance and vulgarity. No one ever read a serious book – about the only reading material in the house was The Sun – and no one ever spoke 'nicely'. I now live in a village, but I still struggle to speak in a pleasant, 'middle class' way. When I take my dog out, I don't know how to respond when people look right at me and smile and say "good evening." My instinct is to look at the ground and mutter "oright". I'm not a pushy parent. I don't mind what jobs my kids do so long as they're happy. But I am hot on education. Right from day one I read and read and read to them. I read them the Narnia stories and Alice in Wonderland and The Wind in the Willows. And whenever we went somewhere for the day (like Oxford or Norwich) I'd google it and try to remember some interesting facts about the place. I also took them to museums and art galleries every chance I got.

I also love any kind of refinement. I mean refinement in manners or speech. I love watching old BBC dramas like Brideshead Revisited or Cranford because I just love the way they speak. Same goes for old films. I also love listening to people like Stephen Fry reading P. G. Wodehouse or Oscar Wilde. People might accuse me of snobbery, but it really isn't. I can't bear fakes or pretentious people, and I have no interest in climbing the class ladder. I just crave beauty and refinement because my childhood was full of nothing but ugliness and crudity.

I carry the sadness with me, it's always there in the background just quietly sitting there, not noticeable to other people as far as I know. I think there are worse things to carry with you, including the things which probably were behind the abuse.

I've had therapy on the NHS but probably need something more targeted than what was on offer (but grateful it was available nonetheless). I don't think you can fully embrace any kind of recovery unless it's completely over and in my case elements of what happened in childhood are still present, horrible dynamics between people, scapegoating, secrets and lies. It never really stops so I just stay away, low to no contact, seek out safety as I see it and remind myself I did OK, things to be proud of, other things not so much but I did the best I could with what I had.

I think some people can and do, others can't, and most people are in between - they handle it and it influences them, but mostly they're okay, to a lesser or greater degree.

For some children it's too late by the time they're six months or a year old though - ask any good social worker or anyone trained in how child development can go wrong. The formation of the brain can be influenced permanently at a very young age indeed.

Also, some people are left physically damaged by their childhood. You can't get over that, either - you have to learn to live within the physical limits imposed.