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.

I was often feeling isolated and feeling like I was living on a different planet from everyone else, because of my experiences.

I've had friends say things like "you need to learn to forgive" and "it takes two to tango" about my experience of being abused as a child. One friend even cut contact with me because she didn't agree with my decision to cut contact with my abuser!

Hope you don't mind me sharing my experiences. Not sure if you will relate.

Your experience is very welcome @Chocaholic9 & I certainly relate.
Your ex-'friend' did you a favour when she cut contact - I was v angry on your behalf for a moment, then continued reading - you have taken so much insight & compassion & understanding out of that nasty experience.
I salute you xx

I'm ok in that I can hold down work, run a business and be in a successful relationship. I still harbour a lot of resentment towards those who should have protected me, and don't have any fully positive relationships with my family. I definitely need therapy.

@Backstreetsbackalrightdadada

Off to Google EDMR! Haven’t tried therapy before but if it’s a possible option…

Echoing the above poster about people minimising/ avoiding talking about your own experiences.

I don’t know how to say this, it is very very nice and interesting to see others post about this as I have never met someone who had vaguely similar experiences - I guess our childhood experiences are all a bit different but the effects seem similar? I don’t really know what else to say and am not really adding much to the thread but I’m so intrigued by anyone who has a handle on it or just wants to have somewhere to speak? I think I’m projecting as hoping I’ve found some “adults” who can help I guess (I am an adult!), just some wise/ knowledgeable people who have been through similar? I think it’s so kind when people online say “how awful” but it makes the distance between me and “normal” feel greater maybe? That’s so kind of them though and always worth saying as much more caring and always be there if someone wants to talk! But it’s so special meeting anyone who’s had a similar experience, I don’t really ever talk about it so not sure what I’m wanting! I hope others find it helpful? I just don’t want the thread to go as I haven’t really found others before… rambling!

I guess our childhood experiences are all a bit different but the effects seem similar? YES, @Backstreetsbackalrightdadada!

And a side note to all the PP who have shared how hard it has been for them to trust other people, open up, let alone talk about their experiences ...

I am long in the tooth, & finally learned that the people who are "my tribe" have either had enough of a similar childhood to 'recognise' each other, or who have the nous & emotional intelligence to get on board with it anyway.
I don't make it my life's work, but I am reasonably upfront about my ... bizarre & distressing CSA etc - cautiously revealing info as family questions come up naturally, & now have a whole 'family' of friends who know enough about what happened to me to be able to empathise. Who understand what a family hug can mean for me. Who know I need a LOT of alone time but will always come back to them after a period of metaphorical cave-dwelling. Who understand why sometimes I might need (triggers, arrrgh) to go off for a little cry or time with their animal, but will bounce back in a few minutes, no need to discuss.

It really, really helps.

& hey Backstreets - you weren't rambling. Perfect sense!

@Puzzledandpissedoff

I'll never feel completely "safe" - though therapy helped - but then I'm in my sixties and grew up in a time when children weren't necessarily believed. So instead of protecting me, the school could easily have put me at even worse risk if I'd told them about my DF's hideous abuse

Unfortunately my DM didn't believe me either, when told about it in my thirties - or maybe she just didn't want to, being frightened of him herself. They're both dead now though, so there's still so much I'll never know

What ho @Puzzledandpissedoff

Seems totally 'off' to say "nice to see you here", 'cos the reasons for being here are ... but have admired your posting style from a distance for a fair time. Now I can see where some of the resonance might come from.

We're a similar age, & lived in similar traps.
I fantasised about telling our GP, or my headmistress. I knew what I'd get though ... the family member who perpetrated the CSA enjoyed punishments, & public humiliations, & setting themseves up as a martyr who had a "difficult DD" ...

xx

[quote SafeMove]@Backstreetsbackalrightdadada

I understand what you mean about this thread feeling very...homely? Probably not the right word but I really can tell that people who have posted 'get it'. Other people who have not experienced adverse childhood experiences often put me on a timetable 'You shpuld be over x, y, z by now' or say 'I am so sorry, that is awful' and I just go back to feeling like that little girl who was doing all this unusual stuff because I was externalising my trauma physically. There has not been one moment of another poster 'shaming' anothers experience here and that is rare. There has been no competitive severity either - in group therapy I often watched people try do one upmanship of awful things that happened. I understand why, everyone with ACE needs validation, it is an unmet need, but it also felt unecessary, everyone had a shit time, it was all severe, there was no sliding scale, nobody should be made to feel less because their trauma is their own.

I don't know if anyone else gets angry around words used to do with abusive childhoods too? I HATE the words triggering, victim, sufferer, lived experience etc. It makes my skin crawl. I have no idea why!

@Bagelsandbrie I am obsessive about watching/reading about murders and terrorism and disasters (natural and man made) . I have the stupidest logic, if I think and read a lot about it a lot, it won't happen to me/my loved ones. It is hypervigilance, muxed with anxiety. But we laugh about it in my family and my partner and DC get that its almost like a comfort blanket for me so indulge me haha.[/quote]
Yes to everything in your first 2 paragraphs @SafeMove!

Also the hypervigilance, & obsessive (although that is a negative connotation - shall we say "natural interest in"?) watching/reading.
Although in my case I can't abide murders/horror films etc, but have spent decades reading up about psychology of DV, child abuse, narcissism, BPD, dysfunctional families etc.

And a lot of Fantasy fiction for escapism. Odd innit, how so many of these stories feature orphans/abused children, who are in some way outcast, misunderstood or marginalised. And who come into hard-earned talents, fight evil, & eventually reconcile into a peaceful life they've forged with new friends & family ..?

[quote SafeMove]@Muttly definitely. It is the passive voice issue. I read through some of my records from my childhood and there was a lot of 'SafeMove was >insert bad experience< at the age of 5, 7 and 11 and this triggered a series of events that led to her displaying psychological distress at these times and her behaviour declined'. When I read it I thought hang on a minute, this wasn't an organic event that originated in my brain, somebody hurt me and I reacted. But like you say, ownership of this was given to me, 'SafeMove was raped' over 'The perpertrator raped SafeMove'. I think when I was being interviewed by various professionals when I was younger, even though I knew the way they said/asked things didn't feel right I didn't know why, which just led to more confusion on my part. Adults saying they were there to make me feel safer just put me on shifting sands, like my abusers did. As if I was ever going to open up to them.[/quote]
Ye Dogs.

@SafeMove - THANK YOU.

You've articulated something that has bothered me for decades, yet I wasn't able to fully recognise. What a revelation.

hang on a minute, this wasn't an organic event that originated in my brain, somebody hurt me and I reacted.

This is so, so, clear & helpful I'm gonna copy'n'save.

You're very kind, @ChargingBuck - and yes, I thought someone of a similar age might recognise the way things were, with the consequences the "difficult child" could expect

Even harder when your own mother rejects what she'd been told later, but then I recognise that those different times meant there were far fewer options for her too

As with so much else it's a question of balance, but I see and read about the kind of protection in place these days, and though it doesn't always work properly, I find myself thinking "if only ..."

@MephistophelesApprentice

Psychological and physical abuse. I started wanting to kill myself at 12, as soon as I heard about the concept of suicide, and there isn't a day when I don't think it would just be easier.

Therapy hasn't helped. I don't trust the psychologists because the majority share the gender of my abuser and the rest of the enabler. Bit of a pickle. I find myself falling into the patterns I had to use to manage my mother's emotions when I talk to them. I'm on the spectrum too, so emotional management of myself and others is agonisingly outside my competencies, but we do what we must.

I have a job. I have had good, positive relationships. But I will kill myself before becoming a parent, and the only thing keeping me alive is the pleasure I take in drugs, games and other distractions.

I'm not ok.

I have a job. I have had good, positive relationships. But I will kill myself before becoming a parent, and the only thing keeping me alive is the pleasure I take in drugs, games and other distractions.

I'm not ok.

@MephistophelesApprentice - this was me.

If it's any help to you at all - I am nearly 60, so may have simply been practicing longer ... I stuck with the "no kids" thing, (but have a cracking, beloved step-daughter), pulled back enough from the "dark coping mechanisms" drug thing in time to not kill myself, spent some short periods in therapy but decades in self-directed reading about various psychological issues, & am now ... mainly ok.

I hope you find some kind of key that can unlock your own "mainly ok-ness". I understand your reasons for finding therapists hard to engage with. Have you considered mutual support groups? - sorry, not looking to badger you! - but if this thread is helpful, or even soothing, maybe dipping a toe into an online support forum might be a safe way to find out if it helps?

no. I don't think being physically and emotionally abused until the day I left home at 16 will ever leave me. Everything I've done in life, I've had to do with no family support.
But it's made me a good Mum, as I swore as a child I'd never treat my children how I was treated

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.

So am I, @MrsBobDylan.

Bloody well done you & you say - fuck her.

Besides, you can order food online these days
Apologies for the levity, a little dark humour for your escaped dark times.

@ChargingBuck

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 also talk to people for a living. For some reason I'm really good at it. I ruled out several career options as a young child because I thought I wanted to do something solitary.

MrsBobDylan

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

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.

---------

Good for you, although scary at first I'm hoping you'll grow to enjoy the freedom from her negative influence.

No I am not ok.
Outwardly I think I fool others into believing I’m ok and functioning but inwardly I’m a broken child.
I don’t really trust anyone, am scared to get close to others, hyper vigilant, the smallest of things can make me jump or make my heart race yet outwardly I just smile and get on.
I have the deepest aching sadness and feeling of unlove/unlikeability within me and even on the happiest of days that I have created as an adult I am in some way haunted by something from my past.
I am super independent and find it very difficult to accept any help from or trust anybody, I would question their motives mostly I think. If somebody shows an interest in any way there must be a dark motive behind it.
I don’t really have any friends, people say they’re my friends but really I don’t think they are, I feel so different to others.
I do have children who I put my absolute life and soul into parenting. I love them beyond measure and am so so thankful and grateful to be their mum, I parent entirely opposite to how I was “parented” and I would never let the world hurt them the way it did to me.
I will never stop trying to be “better” but I’m just not certain I ever will be entirely.
I have been in allot of denial for many years. I’ve always said to myself “it wasn’t as bad as some people had it” but that was planted in me with “think yourself lucky I’ve not locked you in cupboards or beat you to death like you see on the telly” “you should be fing grateful I put a roof over your head you ungrateful bh” etc etc…
I’ve realised more and more as I’ve gotten older that it really was terrible and the more I realise the sadder I become.
I am grateful for this thread though.
I have had papers sat in my cupboard for over 6 months to apply for my childhood social services records but it’s something else I’ve stuck my head in the sand about and I’ve not posted them although they’d been filled out and put in the envelope with ID a long time ago.
After reading this today I dated them and walked to the end of the road to post them.
I’m sorry to anyone else who has been through an unkind world as a child.

I was not treated anywhere as badly as other posters but it was mental abuse and emotional neglect by my DM. Which to this day is ignored by her family. I'm angry. I think I would have made better choices and had an easier path if it were not for her.

My husband went to a boarding school at the age of 5. He left at the age of 18. This was in Darjeeling, India. His parents dud bit visit him and he returned home for 2.5 months. This time was celebrated with parties, cinema trips, more parties and nothing to relate to family life. He could not wait to get back to school.

I met him and he was a lovely man. We married and we returned to our flat that night. I soon realised that he was emotionally dead and had absolutely no idea of how to relate to a woman. On relating this to my brother he asked " did x think this was a business relationship"?

We have had 2 daughters. In 42 years of marriage we have had sex perhaps 42 times. Our best contraception was at the weekends to have our children in our bed eating toast. Sex during the week might wake them up!

My husband was institutionalized very early. Contact with his family was painful and he could not wait to return to school.

I have had no love, no sex. I have no emotional support. I just struggle and continue.

Boarding school is no help to anyone.

I was a baby that really shouldn't have been here. My mum already had her children and so did my dad and then she became a housekeeper yo him after his wife left and I was conceived. They were in their 40s. My mum had a severe mental health issues and my dad was a drinker. I never, ever felt secure, didn't know what I was coming home to. Witnessed DV, suicide attempts etc.
Though I was alright as an adult but looking back can see that my relationships have been flawed by my negativity towards men and that I have seen abuse as normal....
I tried to make things as secure as I could for my children. and have had a long marriage but when I read what women leave partners for I realise that I am damaged.

Hello to that person who messaged me.
My question was quite different. I was addressing people who had people who had been damaged and lived in boarding schools from the age of 5 and their subsequent outcomes.

I am sorry for your situation. You clearly are unhappy, but unfortunately I cannot comment because my circumstances are different. My best wishes to you.

This thread is amazing. I relate to so many if the posts. I am not OK. I wasn't violently abused but I was sexually abused by a couple of relatives on different occasions, bullied mercilessly, and from a benefits background where drugs/crime/neglect was normal. I don't have many relatives left as many of them are in prison for child sex offences or dead. My dad committed suicide, and he was the only person i felt actually gave a shit about me, even though I only saw him some weekends. I grew up without friends, and never experienced hugs or love or support, ever (i genuinely didn't know what that was like until I had a decent relationship with a good man in my 20s - I might never have known!). My mum had a series of abusive boyfriends - one was a genuine white supremacist (and proud). Another used to keep my in my room and forbid me to go anywhere else in our tiny flat. After he left my mum started hanging out with drug dealers and junkies - and I felt unsafe constantly.

I thought I was OK. I have a PhD, and a good career. I ploughed every single ounce of hatred and fear into an obsessive, almost pathological dream of getting the hell out and having a more vastly different life than any of my relatives could have imagined. Went from failing my gcse's (didn't go to school, didn't care and neither did anyone else) to first class honours to prestigious scholarships and finally a very good academic teaching and research post at a university by my late 20s. Thought of almost nothing else throughout my 20s other than meeting those goals. Didn't have friends - while I'm a communicator and good at socialising, I just didn't, and still don't, know how to form a deeper connection than "acquaintance".

I fall into deep depressions a lot. I have suicidal ideation often, and have been suicidal (though never attempted) a few times over the past few years. I have low self esteem, which unhealthy working practices in academia have downright encouraged. I choose difficult relationships with emotionally unavailable men because difficult feels familiar. Am I OK?

The real question is: why am I not worse? My brother hasn't left the house in years, lives in his own filth, and it's a matter of time until he gets sectioned or attempts his life and there is nothing I can do as he doesn't accept calls from me - it is so deeply sad. I'm one of the few with my last name who've survived - literally - and even thrived.

I read the shit out of every single book on every single disorder imaginable. I treated my own severe anxiety and OCD by spending about a year learning everything I could about CBT therapies. Recently after quite a bad breakdown I got a therapist, and it has been transformative. I got my adhd diagnosed too. More recently, I've drawn firm boundaries at work, and realised there is more to life than work. I am considering leaving my "difficult" relationship because I have realised that difficult does not have to be the baseline. I feel OK with the prospect of being alone, and more recently, I've even felt able to give to others, and to listen to others rather than worrying about whether they like me (shocker: people like me more when I do this). I've taught myself to sit with my feelings and feel them rather than avoiding. I realise I have spent a lifetime doing whatever I possibly could just so I could avoid feeling unpleasant emotions. I am not out of the woods.

Ps. I believe I can be OK. But think about the shitload of work being "ok" involves. The original abuse is bad enough. That we continue to suffer is so unfair. That we have to go to such great efforts to save ourselves or be endlessly tormented by our pasts is just so so shitty. Or worse - to repeat the abuse we suffered. All those people who abused me had horrible childhoods themselves. I feel compassion for them. I don't hate any of them, at all, I just think the while situation is sad

@FabalaThropp

Ps. I believe I can be OK. But think about the shitload of work being "ok" involves. The original abuse is bad enough. That we continue to suffer is so unfair. That we have to go to such great efforts to save ourselves or be endlessly tormented by our pasts is just so so shitty. Or worse - to repeat the abuse we suffered. All those people who abused me had horrible childhoods themselves. I feel compassion for them. I don't hate any of them, at all, I just think the while situation is sad

Your posts are brilliant and so helpful to read. Finding this thread feels like I’ve found my people. Thank you all for sharing.

Same as many here. Abusive and neglectful childhood to abusive and neglectful marriage.

Left 2 years ago. Making slow progress. Like so many here, I look fine from the outside - good job, nice kids, nice house. But inside….it will be a life’s work of therapy to unravel the damage.

I haven’t been the perfect parent, and have repeated some patterns from my childhood. But I have been better than my parents, and adore my kids. So I reckon I have diluted he trauma for them, if not erased it.

Yes through finding Christ

I had a cruel and neglected childhood, I cannot think of anything happening that was horrific, there was no sexual abuse, but I grew up with two adults who hated me and made sure my siblings ended up hating me too. But to me it was normal and I knew no different, this was just how I deserved to be treated. I was bullied all the way through secondary school, I was physically attacked at hostels I lived in when I was homeless, I was used and abused by men, included a man I lived with and men in positions of authority.
I have had children but I have not been the best parent and I have made a lot of mistakes. I love them and I am there for them and they know that.
I suppose I have developed coping mechanisms that are not helping me, I feel disdain and contempt for most people in general, I cannot stand to talk about myself or be offered any kind of help or support as no one seems to understand. I have been in an abusive on off relationship for about six years with a man I am scared of but also completely obsessed with, I cannot stop myself seeing him even though he has assaulted me and been incredibly cruel to me at times. He reminds me of my father so much. I swing between feeling completely in love with him and hating his guts, and I'm scared something bad will end up happening.
I wouldn't say I'm okay at all really.