Out of the Storm

My childhood was a vacuum of what of was emotionally needed.

I am grateful to Pete Walker to detail this in his Surviving to Thriving book, that the core of abuse is emotional abuse for us all.   I did not have the outer layers of abuse that make me gasp and cry when I read many of the stories detailing sexual, physical abuse here at OOTS.

That's very interesting. I understand the emotional abuse and neglect - curious if your grandparents drank? The patterns follow forward. My parents were both drinkers.

A friend of mine is going through EMDR, and I kind of wondered the same thing - so many years, so many memories - how do you address every one of them?

My therapist is a big fan of Peter Levine and Somatic practitioner. She always asks about how my body is reacting when we talk about trauma, and I have to check in to be aware of it. Usually, I'm shut off from the physical reactions. I think it's excellent how you are focusing on how your body reacts and are addressing it by relaxing vs numbing out, which is my M.O. I think that grounding exercises and meditation are helpful - though I myself am really bad at finding time for those things. Do you ever try breathing exercises or meditation?

Rain, I am not experiencing exactly the same symptoms, but I think I'm in the same boat.  I too was "only" emotionally abused and dealt with a lot of criticism.  I too grew up alone in my room (though my isolation was by choice; being alone meant not being around my borderline mother).  No alcohol/drug abuse, my material, physical and educational needs were taken care of, and we looked like a normal family to everyone around.

I started therapy in 2011, ended up going no contact with my mother in 2012, she died in 2013, and now I am back in therapy and having emotional reactions to things from childhood that I never had reactions to before, to the extent that I had thought I just hadn't cared about some of them.  I only started experiencing full-on emotional flashbacks and panic attacks after I started therapy.  I don't shake and tremble, but I have felt like I was about to go crazy and I have had panic attacks where I have felt the need to hide, avoid windows and go into a closet, etc. even though I was alone in the house and live on a quiet street.  You are not alone in what you are experiencing. :hug: 

Wow, Finding Your Voice.   This validates a lot for me!!

My CPTSD is mostly from emotional abuse and neglect, and my parents weren't addicts, nor had they PDs. My father had an accident that changed him forever. My mother went into "crisis mode" for the next twenty years. She rarely had any time for me once I stopped being a small child. She was swallowed up whole by work. I took that as a matter of course. It seemed so obvious that our own concerns had to wait until my father was cured. It took me years to realize: yes, she was overworked - but she also chose to prioritize other things above me; she regularly unloaded her accumulated frustration and rage onto me, so I never know what eensy little thing might set her off; and she very resolutely discouraged me from doing anything that was messy, or loud, or meant I had to leave the house. I spent most of my time in my room, doing quiet things that were easy to hide. (Writing. Drawing. More writing. Then writing in English because I was worried she'd read my stories.) The rest of my time I spent watching TV with my father, who never talked to me or acknowledged my existence in any way. I rarely left the house, because if I was out of her sight, she was worried sick. The boredom of it was unimaginable. I used to ration activities out. To this day, I connect to tales of arctic explorers in a way I can't ever connect to "happy childhood" tales.

As for EMDR, do it with someone who knows about emotional flashbacks. My therapist had no idea. Neither had I. What she told me is: she'd do that tapping thing, I'd close my eyes, remember a scene, and then memories would come up - visual or auditory memories. What came up was simply just a feeling of absolute horror, of utter panic. I gasped for breath and said: "This isn't working! We have to stop! This isn't working! I want to stop!" (i.e., I wasn't exactly making a calm request - I was clearly panicking.) She asked me if I'd had any visual or auditory memories. I said no, there was nothing. She dropped the subject, and we talked about something else for the rest of that appointment. (She didn't even ask me if I was alright.) I was triggered and hypervigilant for three sodding days. And after those three days, I wasn't feeling fine, I was simply feeling the calmer kind of hypervigilant.

So for the love of all that's wonderful, please take VERY good care of yourselves. Pick a therapist who knows about CPTSD. Failing that, make VERY VERY sure that he or she knows what your flashbacks are going to be like. Or make sure your therapist will check for every last little possible sign of flashbacks, and will pay close attention to your reaction afterwards.

I agree Rain, our internal landscapes do seem to be quite similar and I think it that when it comes down to it, in the end it's emotional abuse and neglect and we all suffered the same developmental arrests Walker lists in his book (p.22). 
 
The "just" emotional abuse thing had me stuck taking Prozac for years, decades actually believing I had chronic depression, it was "just me" and making no headway, just struggling to keep my head above water.  I thought because I wasn't sexually or physically abused I was not really abused although I realized from the Adult Children of Alcoholics group I went to that my family was at least  dysfunctional. I couldn't quite round the corner to abusive/neglectful though.  When I found OOTF I realized just how much my M's and B's PD behav was abusive/neglectful much like my F's behav due to drinking. And then there was no going back to thinking "Well, it's just me."  My body sure knew and has kept letting me know all these years - I just wasn't listening.

I love the idea that for every symptom there is a cause.  It's wonderfully freeing (and yes a little daunting ;D) when that realization comes - that those of us who suffered  "just" from emotional abuse/neglect are not making too much of things, that life in our FOO injured us and we need to be heard and to heal. 

One stray thought I had when I was reading this thread is that emotional abuse and neglect go hand in hand.  I see that my FOO were abusive quite clearly now, but I hadn't really considered that they were neglectful.  Being unable to connect with them whether it was because my F was in an alcoholic fog, or my M and B were doing their PD thing left me alone, very alone and very afraid.  I have had empty, cold house dreams like yours and never really understood why - essentially no one was ever home in my childhood.  So tks for sharing that, another piece of the puzzle has dropped into place  :hug:

Quote from: schrödinger's cat on September 23, 2014, 06:48:03 PM
As for EMDR, do it with someone who knows about emotional flashbacks. My therapist had no idea. Neither had I. What she told me is: she'd do that tapping thing, I'd close my eyes, remember a scene, and then memories would come up - visual or auditory memories. What came up was simply just a feeling of absolute horror, of utter panic. I gasped for breath and said: "This isn't working! We have to stop! This isn't working! I want to stop!" (i.e., I wasn't exactly making a calm request - I was clearly panicking.) She asked me if I'd had any visual or auditory memories. I said no, there was nothing. She dropped the subject, and we talked about something else for the rest of that appointment. (She didn't even ask me if I was alright.) I was triggered and hypervigilant for three sodding days. And after those three days, I wasn't feeling fine, I was simply feeling the calmer kind of hypervigilant.

Holy cow Katz, that is exactly what happened to me!  Now having said that I don't want to spook anyone completely away from EMDR as a possible tool for recovery because I just saw the other day somewhere on some site (and I will try to find it again), a course in EMDR specifically designed for CPTSD.  And I would like to think it would have to be somewhat different because we have emotional versus visual flashbacks for the most part, and our trauma was ongoing.  The psychiatrist I saw earlier this year said using EMDR for CPTSD is akin to trying to unpick the noodles in a bowl of spaghetti - where to start? 

So if the T uses an approach designed for treating PTSD, it can make things worse (and it did for me - like Katz I had a panic attack that lasted for 2-3 days after each session).  What I do like about EMDR and the science backs it up is that it stimulates different parts of our brain so that we are able to engage the whole brain in our healing and that sounds very promising given the fact that we have entrenched thinking patterns. 

I'll see if I can find out some more on EMDR for CPTSD and post what I find. 

I like the metaphor - a bowl of spaghetti, exactly. Start anywhere and the rest will follow.

I had dreams of suddenly finding myself in a house that belonged to strangers. I had the clear feeling of being a trespasser, someone who definitely wasn't supposed to be there, and in every dream, I'd tip-toe and hide and try to find the way out, but the house was so big and labyrinthine that I never found it.

Quote from: schrödinger's cat on September 23, 2014, 07:52:14 PM
I had dreams of suddenly finding myself in a house that belonged to strangers. I had the clear feeling of being a trespasser, someone who definitely wasn't supposed to be there, and in every dream, I'd tip-toe and hide and try to find the way out, but the house was so big and labyrinthine that I never found it.

Now that is a clear cut dream - at least it is to me now.  Your FOO's house did belong to strangers and there was no way out. 

Schrodinger's cat
Your start in life sounds like fingernails scraping on a chalkboard, like it was slowly painful.  With the Susan Forward Emotional Blackmail book, I get the sense that when people get highly stressed, which moves them into the fear space, that they do these hurtful, selfish things.


Kizzie
I love when pieces of the puzzle come together.  :hug:

Rain, thanks for your reply. It's funny - being validated in this is like having a load taken off my mind. And if somebody can avoid that same disaster that I experienced --- that makes me feel better about that crappy EMDR session, too. So thanks.

Quote from: Rain on September 23, 2014, 08:50:30 PM
...With all the reading lately, like the Susan Forward Emotional Blackmail book, I get the sense that when people get highly stressed, which moves them into the fear space, that they do these hurtful, selfish things like a PD does.

Oh yes, I'd absolutely agree. Also, there's this: http://outofthefog.net/CommonBehaviors/TunnelVision.html (http://outofthefog.net/CommonBehaviors/TunnelVision.html). This explains SO MUCH.

A question to everyone. Emotional abuse and neglect isn't necessarily about the ONE painful incident, it's about what day-to-day life was like. So I noticed that I'm always feeling a lot better if I consciously avoid everything that reminds me of home. I moved to another part of our county, which in Europe is enough to make sure that people's accents are VERY different. My mother's kitchen has white walls, so we painted our kitchen red. My mother loves potted plants, so I'm avoiding EVERY SINGLE kind of plant that she prefers. If, on a Sunday, the radio happens to play the Schubert or Mendelssohn Bartholdy (the way our radio station did when I was little), I at once switch to a station that plays heavy metal.

I used to be super confused about this. Why am I feeling like Busy Lizzies give off bad vibes? Why is it always like petunias have cooties? Why do I see certain things and just get this feeling like - brrrr, I have to run the other way? I used to think I was simply being childish. Nowadays, I'm kind of using it as a chance to make myself feel better. If I'm getting this helpless, bored, lonely, EF feeling again, I'm sometimes consciously trying to find out if there's something too FOO-like around, or if there's something I could do that my FOO would NEVER EVER do.

Does anyone else get that? What are these even? Cooties? They're not triggers. Busy Lizzies or petunias don't trigger me. They just give off bad vibes.

Quote from: schrödinger's cat on September 24, 2014, 07:59:06 AM
A question to everyone. Emotional abuse and neglect isn't necessarily about the ONE painful incident, it's about what day-to-day life was like. So I noticed that I'm always feeling a lot better if I consciously avoid everything that reminds me of home. I moved to another part of our county, which in Europe is enough to make sure that people's accents are VERY different. My mother's kitchen has white walls, so we painted our kitchen red. My mother loves potted plants, so I'm avoiding EVERY SINGLE kind of plant that she prefers. If, on a Sunday, the radio happens to play the Schubert or Mendelssohn Bartholdy (the way our radio station did when I was little), I at once switch to a station that plays heavy metal.

I used to be super confused about this. Why am I feeling like Busy Lizzies give off bad vibes? Why is it always like petunias have cooties? Why do I see certain things and just get this feeling like - brrrr, I have to run the other way? I used to think I was simply being childish. Nowadays, I'm kind of using it as a chance to make myself feel better. If I'm getting this helpless, bored, lonely, EF feeling again, I'm sometimes consciously trying to find out if there's something too FOO-like around, or if there's something I could do that my FOO would NEVER EVER do.

Does anyone else get that? What are these even? Cooties? They're not triggers. Busy Lizzies or petunias don't trigger me. They just give off bad vibes.

It's African Violets for me - I still can't buy them because they were my uNPDm favorite flowers. They don't trigger me, I actually like their bright and cheerful colors, but I can't and won't buy them.

Frankly, I think this is a remnant of adolescent behavior - trying to assert ourselves as individuals. I don't know about you, but I've never really hit puberty - I had to be a grownup by the time I was 8 and missed practically all 'normal' stages of development. Asserting myself as an adolescent was not an option - it was too dangerous for me - so I'm guessing that avoiding things that were typical for my uNPD parents is really more or less catching up on my adolescence...

Emotional abuse often takes on the form of being kept so busy catering to the toxic person's needs that you just don't get the time to take care of your own needs or even learn to recognize that you are neglecting your own needs. It can also take on the form of emotional enmeshment so it's hard to tell where the toxic person ends and you begin... Maybe purposefully avoiding things that remind us of a toxic person is just a way of giving ourselves leave to take care of our own lives now?

Thanks for the Tunnel Vision link, schrödinger's cat!

It has been very difficult for me to admit I was abused. Made more difficult by my M going on about what a good Mother she is. She made a big deal about not physically beating us. Making sure I always understood that all difficulties were my fault. I was in so much mental pain as a kid, that I used to wish that she would hut me so that there would be evidence. She also brainwashed me with programming that all therapist and psychiatrist are shady. That they will all implant false memories, and they will all blame the mother. My M thinks ahead.

So it took me until my late 20s to see a T. I worked with her for about three years on coping skills, never once thinking that my M was not how all mothers are. I finally grasped reality in my 30's after going back to T due to a difficult life event. CPTSD symptoms escalated after I spent time with my mother last fall following about 8 years NC.
I still sometimes doubt myself that it was 'that bad'. More evidence of brainwashing I think.

I too have done EMDR. It works for me, BUT I would still caution those who are thinking about it. I worked with my T for years before we tried it. We started on things that were only mildly upsetting to me. She taught me how to calm myself, and we practiced it, a lot. She stops the EMDR, and goes through the calming routine frequently. Even with all this I had a session that I couldn't breathe at the beginning of processing the memory(I was terrified). It got better though. I am always exhausted afterward.

I love the suggestion to remove reminders of the past. That is self care that I can grasp. I have a tendency to think 'that should not bother me', and therefore spend energy trying to ignore it. It is very normalizing to see that it is ok to remove the thing that is bothering me. Now to try to pay attention to what triggers me that I can change.

I get these thoughts, too. "A truly mature person would be above even noticing such a petty detail." There's a thread somewhere around here about enmeshment and engulfment, and reading this was a bit of an eye-opener. The people who emotionally abused me tried to control me down to the tiniest detail. They rejected or abused my opinions, my looks, the way I walked, the food I liked, the way I worked, simply just everything. My mindset, my habits, even the furniture and the kind of tea I prefer, everything got attacked. The battle ground was everywhere. It's only logical, then, that even tiny things remind me of trauma. After all, even tiny things were pretexts for abuse.

Quote from: schrödinger's cat on September 25, 2014, 07:24:48 AM
The people who emotionally abused me tried to control me down to the tiniest detail. They rejected or abused my opinions, my looks, the way I walked, the food I liked, the way I worked, simply just everything. My mindset, my habits, even the furniture and the kind of tea I prefer, everything got attacked. The battle ground was everywhere. It's only logical, then, that even tiny things remind me of trauma. After all, even tiny things were pretexts for abuse.

  :bighug:

This sounds soooo familiar -----

My childhood felt very similar - there was just no winning with these people ever. I was never good enough and I had the wrong gender too (I should have been a boy........).

'Battleground' is a very accurate word to describe my childhood home - only no one ever thought to provide weapons or shelter for me.

On a brighter note: We survived, 'they' didn't break us and our scars are slowly healing. It's good to get rid of physical reminders of the past. I just wish there was a bin to get rid of the diminishing thoughts and emotions that were instilled in us, too.

Yes, there should be something like a huge bonfire. I tried visualizations once, mainly out of principle because I didn't want to dismiss it as hippie woolly-mindedness without having proof that it wouldn't work. It worked. Apparently, my subconscious rather enjoys getting to picture itself fighting introjects with rayguns. I had no idea. :blink:

Quote from: schrödinger's cat on September 25, 2014, 04:01:13 PM
I tried visualizations once, mainly out of principle because I didn't want to dismiss it as hippie woolly-mindedness without having proof that it wouldn't work. It worked. Apparently, my subconscious rather enjoys getting to picture itself fighting introjects with rayguns. I had no idea. :blink:

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Priceless!  :rofl:

That daily exposure is so triggering and one reason we moved across the country from my NPDM and B.   

I call it the "death by a thousands cuts" but "slow acid drip" works too.  I can see my M for (very) short periods now (and the last visit I did not have an EF - first time ever!), but no way would I go back to daily contact, I just could not keep up with the 1000 daily cuts and the constant triggering which is a retraumatization you're so right (or your T was) Rain.

I have read McBride's book but that's a great idea about listening to the audio version, especially if she has a loving voice - who among us couldn't use that!? 

Just a quick post to let everyone know I added a few resources about EMDR in the "Recovery" and Resources" forums.

Quote from: schrödinger's cat on September 25, 2014, 04:01:13 PM
Yes, there should be something like a huge bonfire.

Rayguns!   Perfect!!

I loved Mr Bill!

And I love the idea of naming our ICr and then having our Inner Child join in in coming up with fun ways of shutting it down.  Wonder if they teach this in T school lol?  If they don't maybe they should -  "Lesson Two; The Snarly Approach to Fostering Self-Protection"  :yes:

Whoa, keepfighting, my dad told me I should have been a boy, too! And that I was a mistake!
Who says that to a little girl???
How can we love ourselves when something so fundamental as our gender was labeled as wrong?
Grrr...

oh, major abuse ....I missed that!   keepfighting and globetrotter, both of you were told you were supposed to be a boy!     :aaauuugh:

Quote from: Rain on September 25, 2014, 08:05:25 PM
I have named my Inner Critic (introjects) "Snarly" and I visualize him looking like a 12-inch-tall piece of snot. 

That cheered me up a lot. Do you know, somehow I always assumed my Inner Critic is someone very dignified, very important, very much to be taken seriously. It occurs to me now that this isn't realistic. My abusers talked from a very immature place in themselves. So snot it is. Thanks for that mental image.

When my T asked if I could picture my inner critic my mind gave me Nellie. The character from Little House on The Prairie. Negative Nellie. I like the ray gun idea. I've changed the image in my head to a cartoon, so shooting it with ray guns and setting her hair on fire doesn't feel wrong.

Quote from: schrödinger's cat on September 26, 2014, 08:40:24 AM
Do you know, somehow I always assumed my Inner Critic is someone very dignified, very important, very much to be taken seriously. It occurs to me now that this isn't realistic. My abusers talked from a very immature place in themselves. So snot it is. Thanks for that mental image.

When I read this Mr. Peanut popped into my head.

Negative Nellie!   I forgot about her ...wow, she was an inner critic.

I pondered this. I think my inner critic is an undead skeleton-type person, the half-spooky / half-comical kind that's sure to come to a sticky end. And it IS undead, in a way. It's a revenant from my past.

Maybe I'll save the snot person for introjects caused by former peers of mine, back when I was bullied at school. It would be a pity not to use it.

I love the idea of doing all those Tom-and-Jerry cartoon things to my toxic inner critic. Strap it to a cannon, fire it at the moon. It's brilliant that it fights the Critic and also pleases and empowers our inner child. ... I'm wondering what it would be like to imagine throwing cream pies at my inner critic.

Did anyone try this visualization thing where you're supposed to call up helper figures? Fictional, historical, or real figures you trust and respect, and who are strong and caring? I never tried that during an EF. It might not work if the EF is already so bad that your inner critic might sway you and make you imagine those helpers turning against you. But for milder flashbacks? Hm...

One of my helpers is Jane Austen. :-)  I'm also trying to picture an inner helper that's the motherly type, so if I'm in a situation where I again notice my abandonment pain come up, I can maybe visualize what this motherly-type helper would do to cheer me up, and then see if I can do it for myself. Not sure yet if that works at all. Might be a good idea to start doing it during mild flashbacks first.

Tried it just now. She offered to make me a big cup of tea, so I'm off to put the kettle on.

Oh, I like that Cat.   Jane Austen.

Nice she "made" you a cup of tea.   :yes:

Not much that I can add here. It really still amazes me how...no matter what the abuse, we all still end up in the same place. The emotional abuse though...I've been dealing with lot of anger and feelings of injustice around the fact that it's so ignored, so downplayed. How easily they get away with it. Especially the cases where PD's come into play.

And it's funny, last night I was watching an episode of Son's of Anarchy...and after all I've recently learned about PD's, I'm seeing all a lot of BPD traits in the Gemma character. And it made me wonder how many other characters on TV "normalize" that kind of behavior.

Anyway, what I did want to post was something interesting that I came across recently about CEN or Childhood Emotional Neglect. The way this woman puts it, there is a difference between neglect and abuse. Those who were abused were absolutely neglected, because they're mutually exclusive states...but not all neglected children were abused. She explains more on her website. I haven't checked out her book yet.

http://www.emotionalneglect.com/

Oh, Rain, I did want to say though that with the physical manifestations of all of this stuffed emotional "stuff", I think it's different for everyone. I think it's really a normal extension of all this for a lot of us to be disconnected from our bodies. There are so many ways for that to happen. The numbing, the discounting and doubting of our own experiences - for me, and I don't know if similar things are common for men...but serious body image issues - ignoring my body or downright hating on my body because my mother used to criticize it when I was a teen - and then later...trading sex for "love" which created a really unhealthy relationship with sex...my body used as a tool, mind completely disconnected from it...on and on.

My body and I aren't "friends", we're working on it though.

But, the day that I found this board and started reading...I had an interesting reaction to it that it took me a bit to figure out. Real high anxiety...and a stomach ache. For as much work as I've done on myself, it's been a long time since I've been able to talk about my experiences with any kind of emotion...and I've been doing a lot of talking lately. I think that was my body telling me that I was having Feels about what I was reading and talking about. I seriously had to meditate, and "talk" to my stomach, sending it messages that I was "safe" before it went away. By the time I was done, I was definitely getting "inner child" kinds of images...so, all of it definitely sparked some "not safe" feelings that I'm not sure I've ever had...or haven't had in a long time. Sucky, but definitely progress for me.

I think maybe I didn't explain it right. She does consider neglect to be abuse. She is just making a distinction I think between the two. She began talking about and studying neglect abuse because people kept lumping them all together...what she was saying was that they are different, have different symptoms and that neglect abuse is always present with physical/emotional abuse...(specific - I can't remember how she put it but like...active? abuse? but that even if there wasn't specific active abuse present, that neglect was an abuse all on it's own. You can check out some articles that she's written about it on psych central.

Rain - well, I would be interested to see what you think about it once you read any of it. I'm always interested in talking about that stuff. And it's so interesting to me that there really are two different fronts that it needs to be addressed from. Healing from what was DONE to us (active abuse), and filling the void/hole from what WASN'T done to us (neglect abuse). It's the second one that I feel like I suffered with for so long without knowing what it was. Carrying this ache around my heart that felt like such a sucking wound. There have been a lot of behavioral things that I have been able to fix on my own...the co-dependency, my attachment style, learning boundaries...but that damn hole....it was always the neglect and I didn't realize it. I spent YEARS...*, my whole life doing things to fill that hole, without success. And now it feels like THOSE are the behaviors that I'm having to root through and disconnect. Unhealthy relationships to food, my escapist activities, relationships with other people...and heal what I had come to believe which was that that hole was never going to go away, and that I was irrevocably broken...that I would carry that pain with me until I died. When I become depressed, that was where that depression welled from. When I became so horribly addicted to a person and couldn't get my "fix" that's where the pain centered.

Since realizing that, and doing my own work with self-care, nurturing myself, self-soothing, getting to know myself - make friends with myself...that hole has noticeably shrunk. I was a little shocked actually, I did not expect that.

"I'm sorry what you have gone through, spryte ...the trading sex for "love" ....my heart hearts for the pain in your Journey."

Thank you. I'm still sad for that girl, and for how my relationship with sex is still being affected. It impacts my relationship, although we've found ways around it. That is very slow healing. Much as I am so very impatient with all of this...want to just...dive into all of it, rip it all out of me, I am only now coming to learn that I can't handle it all at once. I can only handle tiny little bites. And that might be what's been holding up my progress all along...trying to take on too much at once. Overwhelming myself, and shutting down. Just now noticing that.  :stars:

I like your ideas for how you've been reconnecting with your body. I've been having "conversations" with lots of different body parts. I have had SO MANY health problems these last 10 years, and I'm convinced that it all started with this buried stuff. I  may have specific physiological issues now, but I know they all started with my emotions...so, I have actually felt like I've been at war with my body for a long time. I realized at the beginning of the year that my poor body has actually been in an abusive relationship with my mind for...well, for ever. I'm cultivating compassion for it, asking it for forgiveness, and trying to rebuild trust. It isn't easy. Especially when I turn around and do things like escape into unhealthy food. :(

Rain- this helped me so much just now.

Quote from: Rain on September 29, 2014, 03:06:17 PM
I read two of the Peter Levine books, like Waking the Tiger.   It took a while, but I finally got his point on the HUGE importance of our bodies in emotional healing.   The stuffed emotions have a ton to do with our bodies.  So, I have been doing a ton of the physical nurturing that I did NOT receive as a child.   Self-hugging, patting the knee for reassurance, doing "high fives" with one hand to the other hand when I did get something cool done in the day ...celebrating my Adult Self with my Child Self.   Letting the trembling happen ...when "micro movements" happen in my body, I now do them slowly and to completion.

I've read one of Peter Levine's books, and it was an eye opener. I borrowed it from the library, but plan on getting my own copy, as it deserves a re-read with highlighting. I do see how reconnecting with our bodies is essential to the healing process. What I bolded in your post is what I had not understood before.

I've always described my family as "we're not huggers." Read that with a heaping pile of mid-western terseness/stoicism/dry wit. I've made great strides in getting more comfortable with touch, but even with that I still get tense when meeting someone and they do a small hug. I never received any physical nurturing of my emotions. So much so, that it is completely foreign to me. I didn't know to try these things, because they were not part of my world. When I read your post I felt a deep yearning. I went and got a warm cup of tea and gave it to my inner child to hold. It was wonderful. I see how physically connecting with a child, can connect the body to the emotion. A warm soft touch when sad. An exuberant high five when happy. A comforting hug when scared, maybe rocking in a rocking chair(I had to look up that one). The touch validates the feeling, and helps us to feel it in our body.

Thank you Rain.

Like you said bee, "The touch validates the feeling, and helps us to feel it in our body."  I love your phrase.

:hug:

I vibe with so much of what is being said here. It is incredibly easy to minimize one's abuse / neglect because it didn't take physical form.

I'll never forget a recent conversation with my father. He was going on about some friends of mine who had chosen to give their baby daughter a whimsical name; he said that it was the adult's responsibility to name their child something that wouldn't get them teased on the playground.

I pointed out to him that (TRIGGER WARNING) through all ten years that I was in a school where I was being bullied ceaselessly by my classmates, he and my mother took no effective action to make it stop.

He asked me why I couldn't just get over my childhood, since "you weren't beaten or abused," and why I couldn't balance his slip-ups with his many kindnesses. It's amazing to have your own parents so casually invalidate years of emotional abuse and neglect just because they left no physical scars.

I'm past the point where I'm looking for awareness, acknowledgement, or apology from my parents (though my father has been able to partially do this, bless him), but it's still jarring to experience the total invalidation this way.

Rain, your abuse experience was totally valid and so is mine.  :hug: (if wanted)

Hi Milarepa ...thank you for the  :hug: ....and here is one in return  :hug:

I enjoy your writing.   Your father actually meant that you were not physically beaten or abused.  But, he was wrong.   You were emotionally abused, and your parents leaving you for 10 years of being physically and emotionally hit and taunted at school IS the parents abusing you.

Here is an analogy of what I mean.   If I take my pet to a vet where I know they hit animals, then I am just as responsible for hitting my pet as the people at the vet's office.    I would be paying people to hit my animal.    Of course, my vet does NOT hit my pets!

My parents left me in a school for many years where they knew I was hit daily, burned, taunted.  My parents are guilty of physically abusing me for knowingly leaving me in that situation.

Emotional abuse is violence towards a child that leaves an invisble scar ...it is the lifelong wound under and beyond physical and sexual abuse as well.

I'm glad your father somewhat apologized, but he clearly does not understand the depth of the harmful parenting they delivered.   He just says that classic, "can't you just get over it" bit ...like there is something wrong with you.

Can you imagine going to work, getting abused like this at work, as we were at home and at school, and people just saying, "get over it, what's your problem"?

Hugs instead of Hits.    :hug:

Quote from: Rain on October 25, 2014, 11:52:08 AM
You were emotionally abused, and your parents leaving you for 10 years of being physically and emotionally hit and taunted at school IS the parents abusing you.

Here is an analogy of what I mean.   If I take my pet to a vet where I know they hit animals, then I am just as responsible for hitting my pet as the people at the vet's office.    I would be paying people to hit my animal.    Of course, my vet does NOT hit my pets!

My parents left me in a school for many years where they knew I was hit daily, burned, taunted.  My parents are guilty of physically abusing me for knowingly leaving me in that situation.

I am so sorry that happened to you too, Rain.

What is the actual deal with CPTSD engendering parents leaving us at the mercy of school bullies? It's like you said about the hypothetical Veterinarian from *; they were outsourcing their dirty work.

At one point, my mother told me, "just keep your head down for a couple of years" and the bullying would stop. The problem was that I was incapable of keeping my head down. I was the kid who would play "Opera House" at morning recess, bursting into "O Mio Babbino Caro" on top of the Big Toy while the other kids were busy playing freeze tag. I used to wear my Starfleet uniform to school one day, and then a black velvet dress with zebra print tights and a velvet top hat with a rose in it the next.

Head down? Not happening.  :sadno:

Even now, my inner critic likes to point out that of course I was bullied with behavior like that. I was practically asking for it...

What. The Actual. F***?  ???  :blink: :pissed:

I wonder who else on this list has that experience of having parents do nothing (nothing effective, anyway) to protect you from school bullies and then re-enforcing the bullies' message that you deserved it or that there was something wrong with you.

Quote from: Rain on October 25, 2014, 11:52:08 AM
Can you imagine going to work, getting abused like this at work, as we were at home and at school, and people just saying, "get over it, what's your problem"?

I love this analogy. :applause: It's astonishing what we expect small children to put up with that we wouldn't inflict on grown adults...

Hm, my mother simply told me to grow a thicker skin. She said it's just kids being kids. She told me to do the mature thing and change my own behaviour instead of being so childish as to go "the others did this, the others did that, those evil evil others".

When my own kid was bullied, I called her teacher straight away. The teacher stopped it the morning after that. My kid wasn't bullied again.

That floored me. I had expected every single case of bullying to be impossible to end. I had excused my parents' behaviour: "there's simply nothing they could have done." Not any more.

What hurt me the most back then, I think, wasn't so much the emotional abuse at school - it was that my mother just shrugged me off, that she seemed to think it was my fault. I felt completely abandoned.

To end on a less gloomy note - it's improved my own parenting skills, because I'm now convinced that the most important thing I can do for my kids is to be on their side, and to make sure they know that I really see them. Less knee-jerk responses, more active listening. It's devastatingly easy to just slip into a routine with one's kids. So working through my past has made it a lot easier to remember to really pay attention.

Here's an article (http://blogs.psychcentral.com/childhood-neglect/2014/10/how-to-tell-emotional-neglect-from-emotional-abuse-in-a-relationship/) you might find interesting. It's about emotional neglect - very short, but illuminating.

Quote from: MilarepaI was the kid who would play "Opera House" at morning recess, bursting into "O Mio Babbino Caro" on top of the Big Toy while the other kids were busy playing freeze tag. I used to wear my Starfleet uniform to school one day, and then a black velvet dress with zebra print tights and a velvet top hat with a rose in it the next.

Head down? Not happening.

Perfect.