TW: abuse. Those who endured abusive childhoods… are you ok now?

[VisionsofJohanna]

TW: child abuse.
Reading the news and many current threads in MN Chat about Arthur, Star and all the other children essentially tortured to death. My heart aches for them and the terrible experience of life they faced before their untimely deaths.
I was wondering, for those who experienced similarly abusive childhoods: are you ok now? Do you feel safe? Do you think these children could have been rescued and gone on to live ‘normal’ lives if that chance hadn’t been taken from them?
No motivation here apart from a burning sense of anger at what these poor children were subjected to. Needless to say, there is no need to share any detail at all.

I would hope that, if these children had been removed from the care of these monsters, that they could have been lovingly fostered and relearned love, care and family. But I appreciate that might be very naive.

Oh and BPD if 5 and above

I was interested to see the post about fibromyalgia as I think the disease I have now in my sixties is a result of permanently high cortisol levels in my childhood and teenage years. I blame my parents for this in particular my mother who recently died.

I lived in a constant state of terror and fear with very controlling, angry and violent parents. Both parents had personality disorders and made my life a misery. So I ended up in abusive relationships and it took me many years to get my act together. I never fulfilled my potential and although I am happy now and blessed with wonderful children and a grandchild who is such a fabulous gift I do feel as though my life has been one big mess.

My heart absolutely goes out to all of you who have not been able to recover from your childhoods. I totally identify with the PP who said it made them independent. I never rely on anyone but I just sometimes wish there was someone there who really put me first. I have never had that.

I had psychotherapy which helped, but now I just live with it for the most part. I have learned that overwork is a form of self abuse and so I am trying to stop doing that now. I have also got better with money which I was hopeless with for years. I recognise the heaviness in my chest is anxiety and I mostly don't want to kill myself these days. But I do still wonder what that other person would have achieved and what she would have been like.

I had a very neglectful abusive childhood. It’s affected me in many ways negatively. I’m fiercely independent. I learnt not to need as a child and I’m only just working out what my needs are.
I’m good at fixing others and carried a lot of responsibility as a child.
My first memory is fear.
Ive lost two siblings to suicide which I know was a result of childhood trauma. Mental illness runs through my family and again I believe it’s due to the disturbance we experienced as children.
Ive had psychotherapy for 10 years which helped.
What helped more was Adult children of Alcoholics AND dysfunctional families. It gets to the root of the trauma - you can grieve the loss and you become your own loving parent. I’d highly recommend it. The message we grow up with is Don’t talk Don’t trust Don’t feel.
I’m doing ok - Ive faired better than most of my siblings but I’ve also experienced a lot of loss.

I wonder how many of us now work in safeguarding related jobs?

No, I'm not ok.

I am not ok. Had years of therapy and feel fine but don't really function.

Independence and overworking ring so true!! And not living in colour. Softmove yes it is quite comforting as it’s a bit like meeting people who sort of speak the same language?… also feel awkward messaging as am aware of just others, I don’t want to upset anyone but don’t want the thread to disappear. I also hate the soft or passive/ third person language people so use as seems to create distance between us and the events? And yes no one really cares! But we advance anyway! I mean that in the nicest way, I think people can’t relate so it just basically ends on a sentiment of “oh how sad a time you had” but maybe psychologists are better at helping. Still not really sure what to get but to say hello, I really don’t mean to sound trite or silly.

My DH is not ok. I don't know if anyone has any advice but it's destroying our marriage as he refuses to get help or recognise his problems.

@Saturatedfattyacid I talk about one point you raise all the time with my siblings. Imagine what it must have felt like to be someone’s priority. I am amazed my children will grow up with that security.

Does anyone else ever try to talk to their parents about their childhood? My mother pines for the abusive relationship she had with my father (nearly 30 years later) when from my point of view, leaving him was one of the only positive decisions she ever made. Makes the conversations very hard/pointless, although she has recently had therapy (EMDR) for CSA in her own childhood which I hope will help.

Sorry @BloomingTrees I’m not sure what to suggest if he won’t talk to people. A lot of the posters on this thread seem to have had good results with EMDR in particular but not that helpful if he won’t engage. Would he keep a diary or write down what happened?

I was bullied out of 3 different schools, beat up regularly by my brother, both parents worked all the time so rarely saw them, my mum was an alcoholic in early teen years, I was then trapped in a abusive relationship with "childhood sweetheart" who EA,PA,SA me and I eventually left that but am now stuck in another DA relationship. I don't feel like I will get away from this kind of thing and I will certainly never feel normal or okay

@VisionsofJohanna I've tried with my mother. She says it was my fault, I was a difficult child, anorexia doesn't exist and trichotillomania was just to embarrass her, so there's no point. My father just says it was all my mother. A lot of it was, but him being an alcoholic and addict didn't help!
And when I was growing up they would both verbally abuse the other, to me. Never say it to each other! So I was stuck in the middle.

@BloomingTrees

My DH is not ok. I don't know if anyone has any advice but it's destroying our marriage as he refuses to get help or recognise his problems.

I don't have any answers, @BloomingTrees, but just to say that it's really hard to talk about. I was abused by 3 different men when I was a child. I have never spoken about it to anyone, even though the effects have blighted my life.

50 years later I still feel as if it was all my fault. I know intellectually that it wasn't, but I feel that I could have stopped it and I didn't - and therefore I am to blame and I must have wanted it. It has had lifelong effects on my self esteem and on my sexuality. I wish, even now, that I could pluck up the courage to deal with it and to get help. I'm not sure I will ever be able to.

So it's hard for him and, bloody hell, it's hard for you. If you can get him to get counselling (probably on his own to start with) you could both deal with this together

I think I have done ok, despite my parents best efforts to destroy me.

I have had 15 years of counselling, with the same counsellor, and can just about cope with life.

I am 48 and two weeks ago I cut my Mum off. Although I am very wobbly and so scared I can't do a food shop on my own, I am proud of what I have done.

My dh was the first person to love me unconditionally. I am a good Mum and we have a nice, calm family life and laugh a lot together.

I have seen my alcoholic Dad raping my Mum and my Mum holding a knife to my younger sister's throat.

My Mum has pulled me around by my hair, kicked me between the legs and in the small of my back and purposely restricted my food.

Anyway, fuck her. She had four children, one emigrated to the other side of the world and two have cut her out. She is mid 70s, will probably live for another decade or so, certainly long enough to know I feel no love for her and she did a shit job of mothering.

The blunt answer is absolutely not. I have been officially diagnosed with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder due to what happened to me, I am on large doses Fluoxetine and Propranolol to help me get through the day. I have nightmares, daymares, I cannot handle any Stress or even other people being angry around me. It has totally ruined my life. The mother and father are thankfully dead (unfortunately not the sibling yet) I thought after they had died I'd feel happier, and free but. I feel I have to carry this baggage with me forever. Anything can trigger a flashback a smell, a sound, a taste, even certain materials.

VisionsofJohanna and Weedoogie

Thanks, I'm going to mention counselling again. I found out his sibling has been having counselling and recognises the damage done during childhood.

I don't think the abuse was as bad as yours. On the surface they were a functioning family. No alcohol or violence problems. Decent jobs, clean house, food on the table so no SS involvement or anything like that. No sexual abuse but emotional and psychological abuse.

Underneath my DH seems to have a deep sadness mixed with anger and goes on the defensive if I ever try to bring anything up.

He has hated his father from his earliest memory but will then defend him. It's very complicated with his mother. In his eyes she was a victim but on the other hand she was complicit.

Sexual abuse is a complex issue. Many victims find aspects of it rewarding at the time, for example, the attention and affection of an adult (especially if the victim is starved of them from the people who would normally provide it). That doesn't excuse it in any way, because we all know that a child can't consent. But it raises complex feelings in the child and as they grow into adulthood - it is this cocktail of emotions that fuck people up.

And we know that abusers are often very skilled at seeking and identifying the children whose situations make them vulnerable.

I was terrified of telling my parents because I thought I would get blamed; because I dreaded the turmoil that I knew would ensue, with me at the centre of it; and because I knew my parents would be upset and I wanted to protect them from that; because I felt that I should be able to manage the situation myself

Years later, as an adult, I told my mother, not about my own experiences but about the things that went on at the boarding school I attended. I was backed up by my siblings. Her response was " I'm sorry, I don't believe you". This was a woman who I knew loved us to bits and would have cut off her arms to help us. But she couldn't contemplate how her choice of school and her lack of knowledge of what was going on had endangered us.

ok now?

Sort of. Pretty happy with how I turned out, despite it all.

But I regret not knowing who I might have become, without the EA & CSA.

50 years later I still feel as if it was all my fault. I know intellectually that it wasn't, but I feel that I could have stopped it and I didn't - and therefore I am to blame and I must have wanted it. It has had lifelong effects on my self esteem and on my sexuality. I wish, even now, that I could pluck up the courage to deal with it and to get help. I'm not sure I will ever be able to

Just sending gentle hugs or positive thoughts or whatever, @Weedoogie.

*I don't think the abuse was as bad as yours. On the surface they were a functioning family. No alcohol or violence problems. Decent jobs, clean house, food on the table so no SS involvement or anything like that. No sexual abuse but emotional and psychological abuse.

Underneath my DH seems to have a deep sadness mixed with anger and goes on the defensive if I ever try to bring anything up.

He has hated his father from his earliest memory but will then defend him. It's very complicated with his mother. In his eyes she was a victim but on the other hand she was complicit.*

That is so difficult to unpick. Definitely counselling is likely to help.

Weedoogie that is so true. I’m so sorry for what you experienced.

My own parents believed but then just were not capable of reacting appropriately for whatever reasons generational? Possibly their own unprocessed trauma? My siblings including my sister who was abused much more severely than I was by the same abuser have helped for it all to be swept under the rug.

Abuse in families is almost never handled in a healthy way and it is often the underlying dysfunction that made the child vulnerable in the first place that is the feature of the reaction to the abuse.

I genuinely believed there was some combination of words I could use to pull my family out of their denial but instead I got very bad PTSD from trying to make sense of their constantly immoral and irrational behaviour.

Oh @Muttly
Me too.

will just opt out blindly of whole life options to avoid risk (eg having kids)

@Backstreetsbackalrightdadada

I knew by age 5 that I would not be having children. I was right.
But again, kind circumstances conspired, & I have a beloved step-daughter.

Friend's families fascinate me. Being in the midst of a genuinely loving, functional family full of people who actually like each other is a constant revelation & joy. Of course I'm sad that I don't have that - either from my own DC & the friends & family I would have known through them, but from my closest existing blood relatives either.
Who did me the courtesy of going NC a few years back anyway - (I lost it with one of them, after several decades of eggshell-tiptoeing, & the other panicked in case dirty linen & skeletons might start escaping the closet.) That collusion hurt, but it finally proved that their need to present as "Mr & Mrs Dursley of 4 Privet Drive were perfectly normal thank you very much" was way more important than me, let alone my mental health.

I've made a form of peace with it, & would rather be me than my less-abused sister, who has an able brain but no mind at all. A big fish in a small pond, who is so terrified of what she sees as the 'stigma' of MH problems that she actively prevented her DC from accessing the GP for GAD treatment. What I went through (& at one stage barely survived) has given me a different take on the world, & I never wanted to live at 33 Privet Drive anyway ... there's a whole world out there full of positive, reasonable, responsible yet magical people, who push their minds beyond convention, & don't try to manage their emotions by manipulating & controlling & denigrating others.
It's taken decades to reconcile, but I make my family from a selected few of those people, & am content.

& & to all PP on this thread.
Thank you OP for starting it.
Solidarity, sisters! xx

I was selectively mute as a child.

Mute or not, I hear ya @dieblauenStrumpfhosen

Ditto ... yet I grew up to embrace a career where I talk for a living.
It has to be something to do with being heard, being trusted, being believed ... right?

I am glad you achieved some kind of resolution with your mum, Strump xx

I feel really sorry for you whose parents / abusers are still alive. My Mum died of bowel cancer in 2019 and the relief is immense. I should have cut her out of my life years before that of course but as so many here have perfectly put there is a melting pot of emotions and guilt so I never did. I feel incredibly grateful that she died when I was / am still reasonably young - I was 38 - and I still have most of my life hopefully to live without the weight of her judgement.

Sometimes I still hear her voice loudly in my head literally just like she’s in the room with me and I can’t have any photos of her anywhere. It’s too upsetting. But I’m glad she’s dead and I don’t feel remotely bad about saying that.