Stop that Crying or I will give you Something to Cry About

I was taught at a very early age, not to show emotions. If I cried, I too got told “stop it or I’ll give you something to cry about” and I would try my hardest to stop crying. One day I couldn’t do it and the something I got was my mothers fist upside my head again and again until I just shut up completely. To this day I don’t cry much because if and when I do…my mind goes back to being that little girl who got the sh*t knocked out of her just for crying and I shut them down again. I find it hard to express my emotions today. I so wish I could show how I feel much more than I do already, but it’s hard……

Hi Susan KS
I try to articulate HOW I got to the bottom of this stuff. How did I feel about myself? Why did I feel that way? Where did it originate? What happened that I believed that stuff about me? And why did I think that I “LET” people do those things to me?? All of those questions needed truthful answers, and that is what I try to write about.
It WAS frightening to realize that it was up to me, and yes it was LIBERATING too ~ because there was way more hope if it were up to me, than if it were up to “them”. LOL I just hadn’t realize that yet!
Thanks for sharing!
Hugs, Darlene

Hi Jackie
wow… that is awful. The things that some of us have lived through are really nasty. For me, learning to express my feelings came after I understood (in retrospect) why I couldn’t express them in the first place. Why and how I got so shut down.
I don’t remember what happened to me if I didn’t stop crying. I don’t remember much other then the crying, sometimes I remember the reason I WAS crying and being told to stop crying or else.
Thanks for sharing,
Hugs, Darlene

Hi Kimberly
The first time I saw your last name I looked twice too! Last names that start with O and end with ‘met’ are not that common I don’t think!
Yes, a big part of the process of emotional healing for me was in learning to think and feel and stop denying as I had learned to do.
Thanks for sharing and welcome to emerging from broken!
Hugs, Darlene

Darlene

This so hits home with me that i wanted to cry “BUT” am afraid.. You said that

“thinking about it today I know that a LOT more than just “stop crying” was communicated to me with those types of statements.”

When My mom said if i cried as she was beating she give me more and worse it told me my pain was not important .. that I shouldnt tell anyone when I was hurt. .that if people hurt me that i had no permission to let my feelings be seen.. That my feelings didn’t matter. that I didnt matter. that I must take pain but not cry . that i was couldn’t cry .it was wrong..That I should never pay attention to my feelings because if I did there would be trouble.

i know I when I try to open up to “T” about something painful .. I feel the tears trying to well and I am trying to fight them .. and T says you don’t ever have to worry about crying in front of me..just remember to breathe..

Hearing T say i could cry .. just made it all the more harder not to and instead of a few little tears all the oceans of tears held back were coming out.

When I was asked why so many tears I couldn’t even answer.. I was so afraid . while I knew T said its ok to cry and good to cry . .in my mind i broke the 11th commandment “thou shalt not cry” and it was all over the place..

I was waiting for some big scolding to happened and it didn’t. How embarrassed I was . but i know it was not a thing to be embarrassed for now. That crying is ok. but I am still afraid.

I find I cannot even breathe if I cry . because so much pain was attached to crying.that moment tears come fear comes and terror and flashbacks ..

I hope I can learn to not be afraid to cry.. I know intellectually but inside me . I still hear the mean mom waiting to wallop me more.

joy

@Karen

I kinda feel that way too: “coming out of a cult” I have been so brainwashed with so much bad stuff and never taught what i needed to know as a child. So really, I am quite a case
joy

Thank you so much for broaching this! The first time I caught those words passing my lips in the direction of one of my daughters I became violently sick. A memory flash from one of our younger one (we are a multiple) slammed into my mind. For a reason none of us can remember our mother “whipped” us with a hickory to the point of drawing blood when we were around 5 or 6 years old. Those words came with that beating. To add to her demented “game” she then ran a bath of scalding water and forced us to sit in it as the water changed from clear to red. It was so hot it almost took the breath from us. Again, those same words came. That is the only clear picture any of us have of floating above ourself and seeing something like that happen to someone else (dissassociating). The child left behind in the tub didn’t cry anymore that day and hasn’t since. It sometimes amazes me the ablilty we have to “tune out” physical pain but at the same time, it makes since. The people we should have been able to trust to care for us told us we were not in pain and as you said, it became a case where we no longer trusted our ability to feel but relied on others to dictate what we were to feel.

Hi Lee ann
Welcome to Emerging from Broken.
Yes, and it was by looking at this stuff and facing that pain and the truth of what they did, that I was able to STOP needing to dissociate and I was able to fully recover from multiple personality disorder and DID. Dissociating and splitting was how we survived all that truama and realizing where it all started helped me to take my life back again, moving from surviving and coping to thriving and conquering!
Glad that you are here.
Hugs, Darlene

Darlene

What do you mean when you say

“The damage was done over YEARS and it is healed by awareness. And the awareness can come and then go again, that is all part of the process”

What exactly is awareness in this situation and what do you ean it can come and go?

Thank you for responding to me and taking time

joy

By saying ‘the awareness can come and then go again…’ do you mean we’ll second-guess our reality, since we’re been trained for so long that our abnormal was normal? By becoming aware we are breaking the family ‘loyalty’ code and rebelling against what we were taught to be: the subservient, obedient, compliant child who sweeps problems under the living room rug. As I’m coming out of this fog, I sometimes ask myself, ‘Was it really that bad? Do I need to stop all contact with my mother? Am I just overreacting by never wanting to see her again?” So I think I’m still trying to process all this. It’s so intense. I hope I’m over the worst part, though, the retching and two days of numbness/depression/aches a week later. Now I’m just sad and angry. But I have good times, too. I can’t wait to be on the other side of healing!!! I don’t know what true joy really feels like, I’ve been numb for so long.

Morning Darlene,
I read this last night and had no reaction to ‘stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about’. I know I’ve been told that and I doubt that there is any child in America who hasn’t. I was puzzled by my lack of repsonse. As I considered it, I realized that the reason I responded that way is because as long as I was bothering my parents, no one cared if I cried. I learned very early to stay in my room with my emotions. If I wasn’t underfoot and pestering, I was left to my own devices. I also don’t really remember being spanked, I know that I was spanked as a very small child but they left on impression on me. The only discipline I received from the age of about six was not really discipline but about my bothering my parents, most particularly, my dad. The result of my bothering was usually a bereting lecture. I really could do anything as long as I did nothing that my parents had to bother themselves about. They seldom noticed one way or the other if I were crying. When I was depressed, I could lay in my room all day and no one would try to find out why. Their chaotic behavior gave me something to cry about all of the time but if I didn’t cry and make a lot of upleasant racket in their presense, my tears were of no concern. They never stopped to think, and still don’t allow themselves to think, about what their un-parent-like behavior was doing to their children. The only feelings that mattered were my dad’s.

This leads me to wonder what your mother’s intent was behind the words she used to stop your crying. Were they spoken with the intent of teaching self-control or because you were bothering her and the fact that you were hurting didn’t matter to you.

I would have loved some real discipline because that would have meant that what I did or what I felt mattered. I know that the reason my parents did nothing when I left home at 16 was because it just didn’t matter to them. I was rebellious and a big bother so when the opportunity arose to be rid of me, they threw me away. Now that I have bothered them with details of what happened to me after they threw me away, they have thrown me away again.

I’m not sad about it anymore. I don’t want to pretend that my parents care about me but I still wish that they would have. They often told me that they loved me but the intent behind those words was a void.

Welcome Prozac Blogger to emerging from broken,
Yes, that is what this entire blog is about ~ it is about how and why we developed coping methods, (including dissociation and depression, addictions, behaviours) and how by realizing the truth I was able to overcome all those coping methods and take my life back. I realized what had really happened to me and that it was wrong. I realized that there was damage done to me and that I could fix it by looking at the truth and exposing all the lies that I believed about myself because of things like “stop crying or I will give you something to cry about”.
It is great to have you here; I think you are going to like what is going on here and I am going to like your comments!
hugs, Darlene

Hi Pam
Yes, I know that I was a bother. My tears bothered my mother ~ maybe it reminded her of what she just did. Maybe it was the noise that bothered her? Maybe it was how she established her control and felt her power? Maybe it was that she was just so unhappy herself that we just bothered her? I was given the strap, and then told to stop crying. I don’t think her intention was teaching anything. BUT what I have found out in my healing is that trying to figure her out never helped me. That was where I was stuck most of my life.

I had real discipline, but it was never consistent. It was to do with her mood. My father never cared to bother about me so I know what you mean. AND this it the pain of it all. The truth that they didn’t really care or that I was a bother and when my usefulness ceased to suit them, that was the end of that. That is what hurts so much and is so hard to accept.
Thanks for sharing Pam. Your comments really resonate with me today.
Hugs, Darlene

I stopped crying and started reasoning. Then my mother’s mantra, repeated a zillion times to me was, “I don’t want to hear your back-talk.” Back talk was simply me responding to something she just said. It was me participating. It was conversational. To her, it was intolerable. It was rebellion and was not allowed.

Last resort, if I wanted my dad to hear me, it had to be when she and my sister were not around, however he usually deferred to her anyway.

When my chronic stomach aches were verbalized, I was told that my stomach didn’t hurt, I just thought it did. No wonder I struggle with constipation my whole life. When I was a toddler and pooped, she would yell, and yell my name and say she was ashamed of me, and those responses were used in a variety of ways and settings with me.

When we sat at a table to eat, she would look at me and yell, “Eat, eat,…my dad would tell me that I eat like a bird…” It would take me an hour to eat every time. I was always at the table alone. She made me sit in a toddler’s high chair until I went to kindergarden or first grade. I know I was five in that high chair. I saw a photo of it last summer. I was WAY too big for that chair, and bolted in with the tray locked in front of me. It started a real roll of unravelling memories for me. I felt deeply humiliated. I knew at the time that my playmates were not still in high chairs. But if crumbs went anywhere, she would erupt.

When I sang all the time, my parents asked their pastor’s wife, who sang, if I should have voice lessons at age 6, (now, THAT would have been the greatest experience of my life) and my all-knowing pastor’s wife, by virtue of the authority invested in her by her followers (and the state where we lived in the USA–sarcasm)said that I was too young. “We only teach adults how to sing,” she said. Today, that same city holds one of the largest children’ choir networks in the country where they are doing the very thing for HUNDREDS upon HUNDREDS of children that my pastor’s wife said not to do for a child, that was me. I have their instructional materials today for my own teaching. I didn’t major in music 25 years ago, now I am 48, and over the hill in some peoples’ mind for vocal performance, but I am studying with a phD, a 40-year-old teacher now who praises me every week for doing the thing that I always KNEW I could do. But when I did it at home, I was considered selfish, vain, etc., but when others did it, and were good, they were praised. I learned so many bad habits, was moved so many times by an abusive husband and couldn’t stick with any good teachers, talk about years of frustration just trying to learn to do something that we are made to do, and that I KNEW I could do well.

This teacher hears me in the first five minutes and says that she can tell I’ve been practicing this week. (HA–not as much as she thinks)
She says that her college students do not practice. She points out every good thing, and says that I am highly teachable, when tells me or demonstrates what to do, I do it, like most students do not. I think that age, experience, who knows what, but still that little girl that always wanted to sing, because she KNEW she could is doing what she could have done had someone taken the time to show her long ago.

Darlene,
I hear loud and clear what you are saying about trying to figure them out. I wasted a lot of time that I could have used for my own healing in trying to figure them out. Especially, my dad. I do believe that true discipline is for the good of the child. I didn’t have that kind of discipline. My good wasn’t often considered. At sixteenl,I wasn’t allowed to get a driver’s license because I was,in their estimation, rebellious and irresponsible. They didn’t want me to wreck their car. However, when it came to leaving home at sixteen and going to live with a 27-28 year old man,they did nothing and excuse their inaction by asking me, “Wheren’t you in love?” Because I thought I was in love, they decided that I was mature enough to make that decision. They make a scapegoat of me and since they have that excuse,their responsibility became mine. They wouldn’t let me drive because of what they might lose, their car. But I could go live with a pervert because that completely relieved them of having to deal with me at all. Disciplining me was just too much bother and what I grew up to be was too much of an embarrasment. I soooo needed proper discipline but this was denied me. Another vivid example of this lack of discipline was my being allowed to eat a diet of only candy and pop when I was little. This resulted in abcessed teeth before I started school. I also had fillings in every tooth by first grade. I lost all of my teeth by the third grade. The lack of loving discipline hurt me as much as the hurtful things they did to me directly.

Thanks for listening, Darlene. I had weird dreams last night and I can’t shake the feeling of it. I dreamed I was in bed with one of my abusers and then the man that I told you about who manipulated the church to side with him in the trial of his granddaughter whom he had sexually abused came in and sat down on the bed to watch. It was all perfectly normal in my dream for this to happen. I guess, it took me back to the time when I viewed such abuse as okay and even preferable to what I had at home. There’s still more I want to say about that but it won’t come out yet.

Love,
Pam

Kate,
Its awful the way you were taught to ignore your most instinctual responses. When I read your posts, I feel very sorry for that little girl, Kate.

I wrote an article on my blog yesterday about spiritual abuse and I was thinking of you and joy when I wrote it. Its a terrible thing for someone to place themselves between another and God. Its another abusive way of cutting us off from our inner thoughts and feelings.When that happens, we’re ripe for manipulation and brain-washing. It is treading on the most sacred ground.

Love,
Pam

Kate,
I have had problems metabolising sugar for my entire life. I was so small and I think my diet as well as being premature contributed to my failure to thrive and grow. I couldn’t start school until I was seven because of the Scarlet Fever that was ignored for so long and took me a year to recover from. When I started school, people thought I was about four. I know I only weighed 22 lbs. Even after all that pain, I was still allowed to consume lots and lots of sugar.

Pam

Pam,

OK, I see how to find your site now.

And, speaking of teeth, sugar, and scarlet fever:

My grandfather had scarlet fever at some point in his life. My dad had rheumatic fever age 13-14, held back a year in school, home for six months in bed. His mother cared for him. That was the year that his only sibling, a brother, left for Germany/France, he was sent to war at age 18. A HARD year! His mother had the flu in the flu epedemic in 1912, and was weak. She then got viral encephelitis at age 42, when my dad was 19, and died in an iron lung in a few days. My grandfather, the one who had had scarlet fever, married her best friend and was cut off by her family one year later. HE was diagnosed with adrenal failure five years later immediately following gallbladder surgery. It was blamed on the shock death of my grandmother. I have struggled with adrenal shock episodes for my whole adult life. I cannot tolerate sugar.

Pam, DO you have your tonsils?

My husband and I have had some dreams this year, and I think it is a good thing sometimes. I once dreamed that my abusive choir director from last fall showed up with my ex-husband and mother-in-law (trinity of control freaks) to tell me how to remodel my bathroom in roayl blue, which is a color I don’t like.

Kate,
I’m not the first to suffer with Scarlett Fever. Some of my second cousins died with it. The difference was that penicilin was available to me and not to my second cousins. I was a tough little wart though and I broke the fever on the way to the hospital after my granny insisted they take me. Penicilin became the staple of my diet for years to come after that. They didn’t take my tonsils because they were afraid that I was too small and weak to survive the surgery. I still have them now even after finding out that I can now carry strep throat without knowing it. I’ve had every strain and am immune to it.

Your dream’s meaning is very evident. If you were told the sky was magenta, as a child, you had to accept that even if your eyes said ‘blue’. I hope you’ve painted your bathroom in your favorite colors!

Love,
Pam

as far as teaching good singing technique to children, Jackie Evancho is the perfect exmple from this country. And what do you see on the video interview? You see a mom sitting at the piano having her do her vocal exercises. You hear a ten-year-old with a perfectly resonating, HUGE, beautiful sound that can sing absolutely anything, all on its own power, not that of a microphone.

Kate

I would have to say my life is the result of my not making choices. i never had any chance to make any choices. wow. I guess i made the choice not to make a choice because i was scared to death of everyone who told me i better not have a voice or make a choice

joy

People are so insensitive.. i put a general request no one private message me with suicidal problems and self hurt problems and next thing you know the same person I was trying to stop sent a private email with the very content i asked not to see. I am so upset about whats going on in f/b am tempted to leave it joy

Am afraid ..if something happened i would probably be in a very low state. i am already unable to sleep for all she tells me I try to get her to talk to her therapist or her doctor and she says she wants to talk to me.

AM not strong enough am so triggered by other things this week then add that

joy

I feel bad about it but I simply stopped answering as I am not in a very good place this week . having my own flashbacks and last week i didnt sleep well for listening and being kind . I want to be kind but I am needing to take care of me and I can’t give her help if I am broken.

Honestly I dont think this person is doing it purposely but i have been so wrong about everyone else who I thought i knew. i don’t want no one hurt because of me.

joy

Hi Pam

Before I started healing; and getting therapy and talking here . I would put myself out to no ends . even recently but I am struggling with my own problems..nightmares etc. and I have found that more I listened to someone else do such things more difficult was for me to cope with whats happening. I am still trying to get over the last letter and am being called on by someone who is suicidal. my heart is already torn in two , stamped on. .what do i do with their brokenness when I am so broken. I feel such a mess . Thank you ..pam and all for help on this.. .

(gentle hug) if ok

joy

When I first started to heal all I did was cry! I still cry easy now! My parents were slick. They used to commend me for being so stoic!

Pinky,
Thanks for the stoic remark. That reminds me: My ex of 20 years used to praise his father for being stoic, say that HE never cried unless it was for joy, and if I cried, he would mock my sounds, AND he told me for years to slit my wrists. YET, when I filed divorce, he sat in our church that Sunday, in front of the entire assembly and cried for two hours straight, loudly. It was the most disgutsting thing I have ever seen. He never tried to get back together with me ; it was all show.

Hi Everyone
I want to address the suicide type talk issue again as it is being discussed here on this post. We are online. People use fake names and fake locations. I worked in psych emerg at a major hospital assisting with suicide threats. I was the one who traced the calls and corresponded with the police. Because it was over the phone, it was possible to find these people. There is NO WAY to help them or get help for them online unless you know them in person. I do not allow these types of threats on my FB page for EFB ~ I delete them. I will not allow them on this blog either. I won’t publish those kinds of comments… NOT because I don’t want the person to have help or support, but because It isn’t fair to anyone reading that stuff to struggle with the worry and fear of someone who is threatening to kill or harm themselves when we can’t help them online. I have the international suicide hotline number on my facebook page. There are lots of organizations (local and international) who are trained to help with this stuff. These hurting people must go to one of those places for help IF they really want help. This is such a serious matter.
Hugs, Darlene

Joy,
I am going to tell you again what I do. First of all, I do not engage. EVER. I say “please call your local hospital to speak to someone trained in that field or call the suicide hotline”. I have NEVER gotten an answer to my response. But they don’t keep emailing me ~ because I will not engage. The thing is that you will never know if they do something or not ~ and they are making it YOUR problem instead of their problem. There is nothing you can do about it. I am a trained professional, and I will not engage with this because we are online. If someone will not go to an organization that specializes in help for this issue, they don’t really want help. And it is distracting YOU from your own recovery, and that is your number one priority right now.
I hope that helps clarify.
Hugs, Darlene

It all depends on the meaning of the word “No”. In a relationship, if the word “no” cannot mean “no” then the relationship is __________.

A person SYSTEMATICALLY gets you to take back a “no” and no becomes maybe, or just this once, or eventually no becomes yes, and YOU don’t KNOW what your own words mean. It is a process that occurs over time. YOU have become a person that YOU can’t respect or even recognize!! This is how abusers destroy a person. You aren’t allowed to talk, to express feelings, or determine the meaning of your own words.

When a person systematically destroys your ability to say “no”, and you have become a person that you can’t respect, a person, who in effect, is now a liar, you have agreed to participate in a relationship based on lies. You don’t know what your own words mean and you don’t know what the other person’s words/actions mean either! This inability to know reality eventually permeates your whole world!

From my experience, anyway

Patricia,
I resonate with what you said about going somewhere inside of your head while your sexual abuse was taking place. I know I did the same as a teenager. I was wondering if you remember many details about your abuse. I don’t. They sometimes hit me in flashback memories but often what I remembered disappears again if I try to purposely recall it. I went through 40 weeks of chemo 2 years ago and a horrifying fungal infection caused me to disociate. At first that was pleasant but then it morphed into my reliving that time in my life as if it were happening in real time. My husband was afraid that i wouldn’t come back and I’m still afraid that I might get sucked under into that world again. When I quit treatment, it eventually stopped but I did have to take an antipsychotic for a few months. Have you ever had an experience like that?

Pam

Hi Joy
Yes Joy that IS what she was saying. she was saying” I will read and comment on your blog IF you answer my private emails.” and I ignored that email and that was the last time I heard from her in my blog or privately. And isn’t that exactly the message that I am talking about that we get all our lives from so many people? “if you do what I want then I will like you” and we even learn to guess what they might want so that they like us… but the problem is that this is not love or even relationship. This is purely the false definition of love and the misuse of power and control. That dynamic is what I worked so hard to get away from. Still this is a great example of what we are talking about here.
Thanks for your comment.
Hugs Darlene

Pam,

“I went through 40 weeks of chemo 2 years ago and a horrifying fungal infection caused me to disociate”

Which came first, the fungal infection or chemo?

What were the manifestations of the fungal infection?

Did you have any other reactions to the chemo?

My father would yell at me when I cried and my mother would invalidate my feelings, saying “it’s meant to be” and “don’t let it get the best of you”. The school psychologist said “big girls don’t cry” and gave me a pen. She told me that every time I felt like crying that I should look at the pen and it would remind me not to cry.

Hi Darlene. I have been on and off anti-depressants since 2004. And I feel that a lot of people don’t understand when I feel sad or upset. I am instead, misconstrued as being too sensitive and weak. A lot of times my feelings are invalidated, the worst was when I had an anxiety attack where I was hyperventilating and all that, and this person I know thought it was all drama. It is terribly frustrating for our feelings to be invalidated. And when they are, the more afraid we become in showing them. Right now, I feel like I only have my blog to share what I truly felt. I don’t really share much to my family and friends for fear of being invalidated again.

Thank you so much for this post. I felt like I was given a voice.

~Irene~

Kate,
The fungal infection was due to the chemo therapy lowering my white cell count. We all have fungus living in our skin but when the immune system is weak, it can take over. It first appeared on my scalp, then it went into my ears,nose,and eyes. It continued to spread over the rest of my body down to my knees. The worst of it was my scalp. The sores on the crown of my head were huge, they eventually blew out to the size of saucers,and they effected my ocipital nerve. This caused me to have many painful sensations such as feeling like my head was being crushed. (Part of it was due to the fungus wrapping itself into my skin.) I also had sensations of crawling up and down my spine and down my limbs. I also had to deal with spores from the fungus. I lived with this for six months. It ended up that I was allergic to the drug they were giving me to produce white cells. I would inject the drug and the fungus would start to heal only to return even worse than before. My allergy caused my yeast(a traveling fungus)to rise and the yeast actually fed the other fungus. Finally, they gave me ankother drug for the white cells and it did clear up the fungus. By that point though, the infection was very wide spread and the drug caused nerve sensations on top of the ones I already had. It was like I could feel the white cells eating the fungus. That’s when I disocicated. That along with all of the high powered drugs I was taking threw me into psychosis. That is when I fell into the secret world of my past. It was a waking nightmare for me and for my family.

I also had problems with my heart rythm and once it stuck at 180 and I had to have it stopped and then restarted. I became hypothyroid which also affected my mood and my thinking. I had problems with eating and keeping my food down. It was hell, Kate. I am very glad though, to be free of the hep c virus and the cryoglobulinemia.It was the battle of my life but it was worth it.

Pam

Mary
Big girls don’t cry is another abusive statement meant to shut down the emotions of children. It is really awful that a pshchologist taught you to do that! That story makes me feel sick.
Oh and “don’t let it get the best of you” ??? I could write another post about that statement! The best of me?? What part of me would it get? It destroyed the best of me. Thank you for sharing this today. This highlights even more of what I am talking about!
Hugs, Darlene

Pam,

I hope you don’t mind me saying, but I would say that the drugs assalted your system as abusers did in your past. There was something similar going on; it wasn’t about you not being able to cope with your past.

Chloe,
Good for you being able to cry.
My ex, who wouldn’t cry, and taunted me for crying, and told me to slit my wrists instead, WOULD actually cry when watching movies. I am not judging this. I am just stating what I observed. It may be the only place or way he was used to being allowed to feel while he grew up. I am not judging you for crying with movies. I am just stating something I remembered when you stated that about yourself. It doesn’st mean that I think you are like my ex–just wanted to clear the air on that one!

Kate,
That is true but its not all of it. I relived the sexual abuse and that was a secret world inside of me for decades. When I first dissociated, I imagined my old tom cat who had been with me during previous illnesses, comforting me. Then there were more cats and they ended up representing people during that time. It was bizarre. There was a definate line between that secret world that sucked me under and the world that I live in. After that experience, I knew I had to talk about what had happened to me and include the your girl who lived it as part of who I am now. I never want to go there again.

Pam

Kate,
No, I’m not in a dissociative state and I’m not psychotic. My experience was trauma and drug induced. Now that I’m talking about it I feel much different than I did even before treatment. It is very freeing to understand what happened, why I behaved the way I did, and to have no secrets.

My dad was a musician and you could not measure up in his eyes if you had no musical talent. My mother constantly made remarks about my not being able to sing and if I did sing, I was corrected to the point of not wanting to sing. It was a triumph for me in my forties to be singing the Hallelujah Chorrus in choir and have my mom in the audience. I’m no Barbara Striesand but I can sing. My parents used this to single me out from the rest of the family. I was the chosen scape-goat and this was part of my grooming.

I’m glad you sing too, Kate.

Pam

[...] includes times when emotional pain was ignored and when any kind of abuse was ignored or invalidated.  This also includes psychological abuse such [...]

Wow, Pam, I can relate to your statement about being in your forties and singing the Messiah with your mom in the audience. I think I was in my forties before I ever heard my dad say anything positive about my singing. And i about had a nervous breakdown with my mom in the audience when I was in my twenties . I could not stop laughing during the start of the cantata. I had a solo and the director called me Sandy Patti, but the faces he made at us to make us smile, combined with the nervousness over having my mom there, was too much for me and I about lost it altogether.

I am so sorry about your dad. How horrible. My dad had a way of being that way with me even though I was more musical than anyone in my family. He just made me feel like singing was selfish if I was the one doing it. If it was some other pretty girl or woman, then she deserved our attention.

i too was often told that did i not stop crying i would be given something to cry about. another one i heard often was “why are you so depressed? what do you have to be sad about? we have given you everything you’ve ever wanted”

i am only recently beginning to realize the effect these types of comments had on my child/adolescent mind… the effect they still have on my adult mind. i am only now beginning to realize i was emotionally psychologically and physically abuse by my mother and emotionally and psychologically abused by my father, in addition to the sexual abuse rape and domestic violence i was already aware of. and yet i still hear those words, what do i have to cry about? to be so depressed about? shouldnt i just get over it and be okay for once!? i get so mad at myself for not being stronger, for being affected by all of it so much. it is such a relief to read the words on this site and know that so many women out there relate and understand. this is my first time visiting this site and every article i have read has touched me so deeply. like kimberly said earlier, i had to do a double take to see if somehow i had written what i was reading. so many of you alls experiences are exactly like my own. it is quite strange. thank you to everyone for sharing, thank you darlene for the wonderful site. it is so nice to finally not feel so alone.

Kate,

In comment 50, I see that we married similar men. Glad you got out of yours. I left and divorced seven years ago and have not looked back. Like you, my ex never tried to restore the marriage — just used manipulative and abusive tactics to try to destroy me so I would be too scared to divorce. It didn’t work!

Kellie

Hi Everyone

I just wrote an article that continues on with where I was going with this aritcle. The new article highlights some of the adulthood results from the childhood trauma of being shut down emotionally. You can read it here:

“Why I didn’t know how I felt about anything”
Hope you enjoy it,
Hugs, Darlene

[...] my post “Stop Crying or I will give you something to cry about” I talked about the message that we got as children when were told “to stop crying or else.” My [...]

I heard Stop that Crying or I will give you Something to Cry About,
when i was growing up. did i like the options no.
but i stopped crying and learnt. If you are upset. stop, think, compose yourself, speak clearly and precise and you will most time get what you want.
to me it was one of life’s lessons that you have to pay. could it have been done different, may be. but i know i was a handful.

[...] There is fear that comes with this dynamic too.  I am crying. I’m told that I have no reason to cry and then told that if I don’t STOP crying, I will GET something to cry about.  Since I am already in pain, usually in both emotional and physical pain, and I am really afraid of what they might do that would give me a ‘real and valid’ reason to cry” (Darlene, 2011, http://emergingfrombroken.com/stop-that-crying-or-i-will-give-you-something-to-cry-about/). [...]

I was a clever little kid. I utilized my thoughts a lot so I intellectualized everything. I cried a lot. I challenged my parents bu tthey still did the whole ‘dont cry or Ill give you something to cry about’ and ‘stop the crocodile tears’.

Now? I’m confused about my own reality. I intellectualize everything.

I don’t believe my own emotions were real.

Hey Darlene. Thanks so much. I constantly worry and then I worry about what I think I know and then I worry if that was real and then worry about whether all this worrying was validated…or that I was just making it up. What about anger, though? My therapist always talks about it being safe to be angry if I need to be but I can’t be angry. I’m too submissive to my therapist because she cares about me and I don’t want to anger her. But I have nothing to be angry about really, she’s a really good therapist..Again, worrying..

Hi Darlene
Yet again another eye opening post! I recently had an incident happen between my sister & her 11 yr old son. I was upset by how my sister handled her son’s crying. First of all, he has special needs & has ADHD. He has trouble regulating his emotions and gets easily worked up. Well, something set him off and he was crying & whining, so my sister tells him to stop very harshly, and when he doesn’t, she says out loud in front of our dad, her daughter, me & my kids, that he is going to get a “Beating”…not here but “AT HOME”.

Well, this triggered more tears from the boy, which IS understandable!..H also reacts by saying, “You can’t do that!” over & over again. He is terrified and I can relate, because as a child I was not allowed to express my feelings or get my feelings validated. I wanted to hug him & say it will be alright, but I would be undermining my sister’s authority. I did that once, where I said “why do you have to yell at him”?!, when she shamelessly reprimanded him in front of me when he had an accident.She said he knows better. It’s hard to witness this abuse and what makes it more difficult is my parents don’t say anything and it’s happening in their house.

My 6 yr old dtr picked up on what my sister said and commented to me that she “yells alot” and asked me afterwards, in the car, if her aunt was going to hit him?…Well, that was a hard one to answer!…I want to believe she was just saying that to shut her son up & she wouldn’t act on it! I ended up covering up for my sister to protect my 6 yr old by saying, “I don’t think she will do that” and she just wanted him to “calm down”. I was thinking to myself, that I doubt she left him alone. My son told me after the fact, that she already slapped him up side his head!…He whispered this to me because his sister was in the car.

I also told my kids, that I don’t agree with my sister saying that she was going to beat him. I want them to know that was WRONG!…Well anyway, this whole incident had me triggering about my past & how I learned to clam up because i was terrified of the consequences…A day later, I’m still upset and I have the Right to be. My nephew was being Mistreated!…I feel so tempted to call my sister up & tell her that Her behavior was WRONG, but she would have a fit!….What’s important is that, my kids & I know the TRUTH!

My daughter was still thinking about it today & expressed to me that her Aunt was probably yelling at her cousin, at that moment. She knows it will continue, even without me telling her that….Sad realization!

Thanks Darlene. You are right about facing the truth about “how I was regarded’, “how did it make me feel about myself” and “what did it communicate to me about me”. I will reflect on those questions further in therapy. I see what my family is doing is wrong & I am careful about what I say to my kids too I’m just more concerned about the message my kids are getting from my family. I hope I’m doing the right thing by teaching my kids that it’s wrong what my family is doing!….In the past, I wouldn’t say anything to the kids.
Sincerely, SMD

Hi Brandon
Welcome to EFB
Yes.. it is tragic. Facing that truth really helps in the recovery process and was a major factor towards my healing. Thank you for sharing here.
Hugs, Darlene

Hi Kimberly
It is horrible that this happened to you. This kind of thing causes huge damage and that damage gets in the way of living! Glad you are here,
Thank you for sharing,
Hugs, Darlene