Archive for emotional abuse
Psychological and Emotional Abuse; I was Dying my Whole Life
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Pondering Freedom
I was dying my whole life; I just didn’t know it until I started living.
The fog that I grew up with was almost completely transparent. I didn’t know that I didn’t know. I lived in a false normal and growing up like that was the way it was. It was my truth and my “real”. I didn’t know that there was any other way. I didn’t know that I didn’t know there was indeed another way; most of my life, my reality and my truth were dysfunctional. The adults, the reality all malfunctioned.
And therefore so did I.
That is what living in a dysfunctional family was like for me. Those were the effects of psychological abuse emotional abuse and trauma. That is the effect of being groomed and being trained in silence, compliance, obedience and obligation. That is what happens when a child is taught that their value as an individual is not the same as the value of others. There are consequences and negative results when we are raised in a false normal.
Psychological abuse is at the root of all forms of abuse. It is part of the grooming process. Emotional abuse and neglect makes a statement to a child. Abuse in any form makes a statement about human value. It teaches things that to the child that no child should be taught. It teaches the WRONG thing.
Sexual and physical abuse leave a child living in fear every day of their lives. It doesn’t make “sense”; abuse is incomprehensible and as a child I had to try to understand. Trying to understand something that is incomprehensible as a child is impossible. So, I “tried” to understand “them” for the rest of my life and as I was slowly dying I didn’t realize that my life was being extinguished by the very people who Read More→
I Thought my Mothers Dysfunctional Behaviour was Normal
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I was 13 years old the first time I woke up hearing my mother having sex. My parents had been split up for a few months; I had never heard my parents having sex. By the sounds of it, I thought that the man my mother had in her bedroom with her was trying to kill her. And he could have been! How would anyone know? None of us knew him.
I felt frozen in my bed, terrified about what I was hearing and not knowing what to do about it. Should I get a large object and go in there and club him over the head? Should I call the police? My frozen immobility and indecisiveness was making me feel guilty and then suddenly, those horrifying sounds stopped. I heard normal murmuring sounds of conversation. I must have gone back to sleep then. Eventually, I figured out that what was going on in her bedroom was not murder or physical violence.
My toxic mother didn’t want to be a single mother. That was her answer to everything. It was even her justification for having very loud sex with men while three children slept in rooms very close by.
One of my brothers made comments about her night-time noise making sessions; she would respond “I never asked to be a single mother”. I was left to assume the translation for that statement. And I translated it according to my belief system. My mother deserves to be happy. Men make her happy. I have no right to interfere with her happiness. I have no right to feel uncomfortable about Read More→
Put Down Statements Designed to Burst your Bubble
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Have you ever had fantastic exciting news and when you went to tell family, co-workers or perhaps your friends, you were met with a put down or some version of a put down?
Have you ever walked away from telling your exciting news feeling somehow defeated or dejected or feeling disappointed and rejected; as though your good news somehow wasn’t that good anymore?
I have had major issues with this in my lifetime.
People who were “supposed to love me”; family, boyfriends and people who were “supposed to be my friends” said things like;
“Well it can’t be that great”. What’s the catch?” Or “how did YOU get that award or offer?” What about; “Why you? Why would they pick you?”
These types of statements have a clear message attached to them. The message is “WHY would anyone see value in YOU?” Those statements communicated to me what the speaker THOUGHT about me and how they defined my value and worth.
There were often really devaluing questions about the motives of whoever was acknowledging me; Questions like “are you Read More→
Are there Excuses for Emotional Abuse and Child Neglect?
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Sometimes it strikes me that my blog may not be “fair” to my mother because I had two parents and the truth is that my father did as much damage in my life as my mother did. Although I want to write about my father, there just isn’t much to write. My father was emotionally unavailable and emotionally absent and by definition my father was emotionally abusive.
My father didn’t contribute much to my life at all. He didn’t pay attention to me, he didn’t affirm me, he didn’t communicate with me in fact I don’t know what role he did play in my life other then financial support while I was growing up.
I think that my father is dissociated. The “disconnected from the world and from himself” kind of dissociated. Perhaps he has dissociative identity disorder and since that is what I had, I know a lot about it.
My father is passive and apathetic as though nothing matters and nothing impacts him. He refers to himself as easy going. I think that he is passive abusive and as I said emotionally abusive.
Why was my father so apathetic when it came to me? Why did he behave as though I didn’t matter and communicate that message to me through so many of his actions and inactions? Growing up, I didn’t think that it was about HIM. I thought that it was something that was wrong or missing in me. Realizing that he was dissociated at first made me say “OH YA that makes sense” BUT it didn’t go any distance towards my freedom from the pain I had always had in relation to my emotionally unavailable father.
People say things like “well at least he didn’t beat you.” And I never knew what to say to that. That statement is a guilt trip. It is like saying … Read More→
How I learned to Self Abuse by Pam Witzemann
Posted by: | CommentsPlease help me welcome guest blogger Pam Witzemann as she shares about Self Abuse and how she realized that it was in fact, learned behavior. Pam is a frequent guest blogger here at Emerging from Broken and contributes her voice to the comments in almost every post here on Emerging from Broken. Darlene Ouimet
How I learned to Self Abuse by Pam Witzemann
I was a self-abusive person. I wasn’t born as a self-abuser. I was taught to abuse myself by the way I was devalued as a child and the behavior that was modeled for me.
As a child, I was medically, emotionally, and spiritually neglected. I was psychologically and emotionally abused. I was given alcohol as medicine on a regular basis from the age of six months and also allowed sips of beer and other adult drinks. On holidays, I was allowed to drink hard eggnog and wine. As a toddler, I was allowed to eat only candy and drink coffee with the adults. I use the term toddler as an age descriptive term but I was never actually a toddler. I was what is now called a schoocher. Because I was born premature, my brain didn’t know where my arms were and I used my legs instead. I sat on my bottom and scooted. I tried to walk at about one year but fell like an egg, unable to catch myself, and didn’t begin walking until I was three. I never had any medical help with this disability. I don’t know if there was any help available but I do know that my parents never investigated any further than Read More→
Saying Sorry I’m not Perfect Deflects from the Point
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Lets have a nice cup of coffee and forget all about "it".
What do people mean when they declare in an exasperated voice “Well sorry! I’m not perfect”
There are different versions of this statement said in different ways, with different voice inflictions so for the purpose of “fog busting”, here are a few of them:
“I’m not perfect” This is stated as though “perfection” is what I am asking for and implying that the problem is not their actions but in fact my expectations.
“Well sorry I’m not perfect”; Stated as a plea to make me sorry that I made this person feel bad. Once again this is turned around on ME indicating that I have done or said the wrong thing and that the problem is actually NOT theirs, but mine.
“I never said I was perfect” Stated a little heavy on the sarcasm indicating that once again I have asked too much and indicating that my expectations are Read More→
Hoarders Illustrating Psychological Abuse and Protecting Abusers
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“This notion, that parents must never be blamed no matter what they have done, has caused untold damage.” Alice Miller ~ Banished Knowledge
The other night I was watching the show “Hoarders” on television. The eldest daughter came home from University and brought her boyfriend along for a visit. Even before they entered the house, she started reminding him not to “say anything.” Inside the house was a shocking mess. Her mother was a hoarder. The “hoard” in some places was up to the ceiling. There were slim pathways everywhere so they could make their way through the house. Before the daughter and her boyfriend arrived, the mother told the camera crew that her daughter was “happy” as long as she could sleep in her bed; that the stuff piled all over her bedroom didn’t bother her. Again, the “stuff” was piled up to the ceiling in her room too.
There were bugs everywhere. There were mice and rodent droppings everywhere. The boyfriend was pretty disturbed about it but she kept warning him not to say anything. She reminded him, pleaded with him and she told him outright not to say anything.
The biggest concern that she had was to protect her mother. Her mother had a problem that was affecting the whole family, but the mothers feelings had to be Read More→
Dysfunctional Family Law and Family Belief Systems
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“All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection” ~ Alice Miller
We all grow up with laws and we learn what the laws of the land are and we learn to abide by the law or face certain consequences. We are taught that if we speed, we will get a speeding ticket which includes a fine. We learn that killing another person is wrong and it will land you to prison. We learn that stealing is also an offence punishable by the law. We are taught that punching someone in the face is assault and that threatening another person with any kind of harm is illegal. We learn these laws and are taught to abide by them from various sources such as our families, media, books, news and school. Laws of the land are for our own good. They are meant to protect us and to sustain an at least somewhat civilized society. The law of the land is set in place to give each human being equal rights as a human being.
But some of the things we learn are NOT for our own good. Sometimes we learn to live by a dysfunctional law. Sometimes we learn that we don’t have a right to what IS best for us, but that others have rights to use us and Read More→
Why I Didn’t Know how I Felt about Anything
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On the blog post about the feelings of loneliness in recovery a commenter wrote about “going blank” when she is asked how she ‘feels’ or what she “thinks” about something. This is something that used to happen to me as well and it is another one of those pretty common reactions that people have. The reaction of going blank or freezing at the question of “how do you feel” has an origin; it comes from somewhere and like all reactions it was something that I learned to do in order to deal with people. Freezing or going blank for me became a coping method and a way to survive but there is a reason that my mind learned to shut off and react Read More→
Loneliness in Recovery and Emotional Healing
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As a child I was aware of a feeling of longing for something and of not being sure what I was longing for. It was as though something was missing but I didn’t know what. I naturally concluded that whatever was missing was in me and my fault. As an eight year old child, I remember watching the musical movie “Oliver” and “knowing” deep in my soul that I understood that orphan boy, even though I was not an orphan myself. When Oliver sang the song “Where is Love” I thought that he was reading my mind. I didn’t even question why I felt such an affinity with the character in that movie who was a very young and unwanted orphan, kicked out of the orphanage because he admitted that he was hungry. I took that as a warning that I better not do or say anything in my own unhappy home least I also be banished.
As an adult I could relate those same feelings and I labelled them the feeling of extreme loneliness. I felt guilty and ashamed Read More→
