OnePlusOne, I will have a look at that Alice Miller thing, thank you. I could print some of it off and send it to my bro as well couldn't I, because I'm allowed to send in papers with letters (when I get a printer that doesn't keep stopping working!).
Your last post really does make sense to me about contact re-opening wounds! That is exactly how I am feeling about contact with my parents and brother at the moment, but it is all a bit raw since I've been having therapy. If we come fully to terms with what happened and start feeling ok about it will it stop being painful to have contact? Maybe seeing them could be a kind of useful measuring device of how far we have progressed depending on how bad the contact makes us feel (or is that masochistic gibberish born out of me not having the guts to cut anyone off!?)
And I can really see how seeing your 'normal' sisters with their 'normal' lives who don't have to live with and contain the same 'demons' as you would make you feel a lot of bitterness and feelings of how unfair the world can be. Especially if their attitude is 'oh get over it, it wasn't as bad as you make out and we haven't let it affect us' because they find it hard to see that it could have been any different for you because they can't feel what that feels like because it never happened to them.
When I was a teenager and I started to realise that other people's families were different from mine and other people didn't have to go through the things that I did which I had come to see as normal, I started to become angry. I wonder if seeing your sisters makes you feel the way I did then.
Other people seemed confident and happy with their self image and I felt that some of them looked down on me for being a 'weirdo' or not as confident as them and were laughing at me and not understanding why I would 'choose' to be the way I was (I think "I don't choose it you idiots (them), what would you be like if the same things happened to you?!"). I felt angry that they would think like that when they had a 'head start' over me by having loving families in which they weren't being humiliated or hurt or touched inappropriately. I thought of course you are going to be more confident when you don't have to go through all that and your parents are being loving and telling you how great you are all the time and bolstering you up rather than ignoring you even when you are asking for help and dismissing you and never expressing any positive feeling (or any feeling). I used to think if you knew what it was like for me you might not think the way you do, but I didn't feel I could talk about what it was like for me back then. It seemed sordid and something that should be kept secret that I was ashamed of. I was always trying to act like I was as 'cool' as the others but with the feeling that they might find out the real me and be disgusted and full of contempt. I couldn't relax and let my feelings show too much in case they saw the real and crap me.
I was angry for a long time that everyone else seemed more important than me, it was in their 'aura' and mannerisms and they were being treated with more respect than me. This 'aura' makes people less inclined to target them for abuse, but like PinkyMinxy said recently, when you have been taught not to value yourself by crap parents your aura gives off some kind of 'scent' or something, some kind of sign that says "Kick Me" and people who are abusive pick up on it and target you. I could never work out why I seemed to have gone through several bad experiences of a sexual nature with different people and why this happened to me but didn't seem to happen to other people. It seemed like they could see that I was so shit and unimportant that it was ok to treat me that way and it reinforced this view of myself each time it happened. And I did think it was my fault for allowing it to happen because I was weak. But I now think it is because of the vulnerable 'aura' which abusers look for in people and target.
I feel more angry towards my parents for this than the people who did it, who just seem like irrelevant people not worth thinking about. If they had instilled a confident aura in me I wouldn't have been targetted! I really did believe that I WAS less important than everyone else, not just that I had been made to feel that way when it wasn't true. I've just had a comforting thought actually, that if I bring my children up with plenty of love and praise and encouragement and treat them as though they are important, they will have a confident aura and it is less likely they will be targetted by abusers. I am really scared of the thought that this could happen to them and have a horrible view of the world being full of abusers everywhere you look.
You can see you are doing better with your own children than your parents when you think back to things you have done in the last week with your children eg cuddling them and making them laugh, and think - did my parents do that - No. Or when you praised and encouraged your kids eg when they were doing drawing or going up a climbing frame in the park and you think, do I remember my parents ever doing that - No. Or when you explained to your oldest child that if they do x to their younger brother then that is bullying and doesn't make them feel good and you know how it feels from what you told me happened to you in the school playground the other day and you didn't like it so it is not nice to make your brother feel like that is it. Did my parents ever talk to us about how you should treat other people and explain anything like this - No. Maybe if they had explained this to my brother from a young age.... Or what about when your child tells you about another child being horrible to them and you ask questions to find out exactly what happened and then say to them something like It was wrong of her to do that and it is bullying, if she does that again, say to her Don't do that, I don't like it, and if she doesn't stop, say If you keep doing that I will tell a teacher, but if you are scared to tell a teacher you could take a friend with you, or tell Mummy and I will talk to a teacher for you. Did my mum ever try to find out exactly what happened - No, she was too 'scared' to find out. Did she ever explain to me what I should do to protect myself - No. Did she ever offer to do anything herself to help me - No. She just said in an annoyed voice "Oh, take no notice" and didn't want to talk about it any further.
Wow, people's posts seem to be sparking off loads of thoughts for me at the moment! Thank you everyone for sharing your stuff because it makes me think of new stuff all the time from different angles and sometimes useful ways of thinking come to me which I wouldn't have thought about otherwise.