Emotional abuse and neglect (TRIGGERS, maybe)

[MaggieMayCat]

 

Thank you so much for putting this here - it is going in my journal. 

[Liliuokalani]

I think that's all so true, and a lot of that stuff is echoed in the OOTF site. They have created a coping mechanism that minimizes your issues so much that is works for them. Not you. And to them you are a cliche. My parents would accuse me of things a typical teenager would do my age, but things I never, ever even thought of doing. When I came home late from play practice, just about to do my homework, so that I could get straight A's in my advanced and college level classes, my mom would tell me she almost called the police because she thought I was off somewhere doing drugs or having sex. Nothing I ever did screamed I'm going to rebel and do those things. And I almost wanted to do those things anyway. You've already pegged me as that kind of girl, you don't trust me at all, so why not just go ahead and do it? I wouldn't be disappointing you, I'd be giving you something to complain about to your other mom friends. Oh my silly teenager. She's such a cliche.

And whenever an attending thinks of me as a med school student cliche, I get so angry and frustrated I want to cry. An emotional flashback for sure. I just had this epiphany today. Med students, they don't really want to get to know patients, they just want to sit and study for their exams. They don't want to sit and talk to patient's about their problems. Doctors also have this detached I don't care attitude because we all know full well under the surface we care so much we hurt. I'm not a cliche. I'm a person, and very different from most med school students I know, who either are or learned to be emotionally retarded. Feelings? What are those? I mean it just feeds my dysfunction. Any emotional abuse I speak of with my family I typically just get "oh silly parents, mine are just like that." response. No they probably aren't! Or if they did maybe you need help too! Don't minimize my problems!

Urgh.

[Gabrielle4500]

Hello Cat,
and a big thank you! I can see in your words that many others think like me... or feel like me perhaps is a better way to put it!

Speak about minimizing and trivializing! I live in Australia now but was born into another culture, where parents had all rights on children and, short of killing us, they could do as they pleased.

My parents were very abusive and neglectful. Mother was a narcissist who of course refused to acknowledge ANY wrongdoing. Father was in thrall of her, despite living like cat and dog. And I was the scapegoat. They only joined together in agreement when it came to decide how 'an ungrateful daughter' I was. You know what I mean.

Well, I'm having a flashback right now so I will stop for now.

Thank you again,

Gabrielle

[voicelessagony2]

Any emotional abuse I speak of with my family I typically just get "oh silly parents, mine are just like that." response. No they probably aren't! Or if they did maybe you need help too! Don't minimize my problems!

Urgh.

Lili, that infuriates me too. I have removed myself from the entire circle of "friends" I used to hang out with, because I got sick of that response. One previous friend IM'd me recently and asked what have I been up to, (had not heard a peep from her in nearly a year) and I said, "working on myself" she asked what that meant, and I said "deep emotional *" b/c I didn't want to get into it. She responds with "LOL! You're hilarious!" ... I did not reply, still going *? Hilarious? Really? 

[Liliuokalani]

Oh god. That sounds just like most of my friends. Gross. Just gross.

Why does no one know the phrase "working on myself'? Some people just have absolutely no self awareness. And then they laugh it off just like that. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. 

Sometimes when I'm feeling spiteful I just flat out respond "it's not funny." And then watch their awkward attempt at keeping the conversation light. But I have found odd ways to get my kicks like that, as a coping mechanism I suppose. But most of the time, like you, I just don't respond. Not worth your time man. But then again, where are those people that ARE worth your time, where did they go?

[pamela smith]

Wow.  First post I read.  Absolutely amazing, cat!

[HoneyBee]

Thank you for this post. I find that feeling of emotional overwhelm so frightening, and it is helpful to think that it is there for a reason - to give access to an authentic self. Such wise words...

B

[habitude]

Thankyou Cat for your impassioned writeup 

I think it's that our abusers - or at least those in my FOO did - see us as objects. In a very real sense we're not actually people to them, who have feelings and needs and likes and dislikes. I have to keep telling myself that my feelings matter, that they're important, that I matter. I think for most people out there that's a real 'er... duh!': of course your feelings matter (etc). But for those of us who experience/d abuse, and IMO especially emotional abuse, this is a revelation.

It's been nearly two years that I've been working on accepting and self-validating, and also noticing the objectification in the abuse from my FOO. I had a real 'oh wow' moment 18 months ago where I saw my mum talking to my great aunt about what she wanted to cook and ignoring her feelings in a joking manner. It was a low stakes situation and probably something where no one would call it out as bad or wrong, but for me seeing how she ignored her wishes and dismissed her likes just really brought it home. If everyone else is an object, then of course your feelings and opinions are the only ones that matter - no one else actually has feelings except for when you need them to to validate your opinion. Understanding that this was what had been happening for years helped me get out of the 'if only she would just listen' or 'don't they see that X is bad' or 'I'm a good person why can't they see that?' - basically, the fog of interacting with them and living in their world - and see clearly that this has been going on since I was born and that it is wrong and abusive. Emotional abuse is so hard to describe to others, that I think it makes it harder for us to describe it to ourselves and understand what has happened and the impact of it on our selves and our lives (actions are always easier for humans to understand and classify). By realizing that my parents had always seen me as an object I was able to 'see' their behavior clearly, and understand that it wasn't my fault.

That doesn't mean that all the guilt and shame went away of course, but it does help me get out of the mental replaying of situations trying to have them end better, ie the 'If only ...'s (you know, where you revisit that time that he said X and she said Y and if only you had said Z or done A it would all be ok, right?). I'm more able to accept that nothing I did or said could change it as it was about them: I had as much value and input as that chair over there. And you don't expect to consider the feelings or opinions of a chair, do you? !

Thanks again Cat!

[StillInTheDarkness]

Cat,

I'm new, here, and what you wrote was stunning!  You expressed, with great clarity and precision, how it feels to be on the receiving end of abuse, which in my case, is from my uBPDw.   And those EFs and moments of sudden feelings of rage do indeed remind me that I'm not gone.  I'm glad, because I the miss that 'me', before she and I crossed paths.  24 years of living in a bizarre, twisted, alternate reality to someone I thought was the love of my life and valued me as much as I valued her. 

We live, we learn and if we develop insight, we rise from the ashes, to be strong and whole, again.

[ContemplativeLady]

And THAT is why they abused you in the first place. They never looked at you and saw another human being. They never saw you. Oh, they saw someone - a cliché, a two-dimensional figure straight from out of a cheap cartoon. They never had a real relationship with you. What they had instead was a series of triggers. Such-and-such an action on your part would trigger this-and-that abuse on their part. What you explained, what you asked, what you signalled them, that never even registered. If it did, it was quickly brushed aside.

Thank you for putting this into words for me.