Surving Childhood Emotional Abuse

[redpaint]

I've read several posts of this forum, and it's really made me feel better to know that I'm not alone in having a dysfunctional family and wanting to be cut off form them. I'm writing my story below both to partly sort things out for myself and get things off my chest, and also to help other who may be in similar situations. This may be kind of long.

 

My home life was insane growing up, and I was severely emotionally (and sometimes physically) abused by my mother, my grandmother, and my aunt. My father was never really in the picture, and died when I was 13.

 

This is a classic example of the cycle of emotional abuse, because I've heard vague stories about how horrendous my grandmother was treated by her parents and siblings. I've witnessed and experienced first hand the concentrated trickle down effects as my grandmother continued the legacy of pain.

 

Before we even get to me, I want to explain that my mother and aunt were completely beaten down all their lives by my grandmother's abuse. They both have very different personalities, but they both suffer from extreme self-esteem issues, severe isolation, paranoia and inability to to handle social interactions. Emotionally, they are both still children (and they are both over 50 now). In fact, I estimate that my aunt has the emotional maturity somewhere near a 12-14 year-old and my mother has the emotional maturity more like 7-10. In effect, I feel like I've been raised by children, and as I've gotten older, it often felt like I was the one raising them.

 

When I was born, my mom promptly left my father and settled back into her mother's house. My grandmother's last husband (my aunt's father) died sometime before I started remembering things, and the first things I remember were comforting the three of them through nonstop tears. They immediately viewed me as their comfort, and because they had such toxic relationships with each other, I was one they turned to fill their emotional voids, only a part of which was the grief from the recent death. Most of my early memories were of them screaming at each other constantly and my mother's mood swings. I was her child, and I was also her stand-in spouse. She would play silly emotional games with me where she would smother me with attention, and then withhold it from me, and then come and beg for me to love her, when I think what she really wanted me to do was beg her to love me. She would look at me with a look of complete and utter need and tell me that I was her everything. She wanted me to fix her to give her everything she wanted, even though she had no idea what that was. All my life I was told that I never loved her enough, followed by torrents of tears. My grandmother would also sometimes use this trick on all of us to make us come profusely process our love. My grandmother would also try her best to trick any of us into doing things with lies, and then laugh with the others about how she tricked one of us, and how funny and powerful she was. When she got married again, she would spend most of her time devising these "tricks" for her husband so she could tell us and laugh. They also physically abused each other out of our sight. There were strange dents all over their new house from where she had kicked or hit something. This type of behavior sent me on emotional rollar-coasters and ultimately made me feel queasy and gross inside. When I was very young, I didn't mind this so much, but the older I got, the more repulsed I became. When I was about 9 years old, and had only the beginnings of breasts, all three of them began ridiculing me and making fun of me. My mother then thought it was appropriate to both tell me how sinful it was to enjoy sex and also to relay to me every sexual-type encounter she'd ever had (which wasn't really much because she viewed any kind of sexual desire as a terrible sin- but it was all still too much for me, and in fact her view of sex as sin probably messed me up sexually more than her compulsion to divulge secrets to me). It was like as soon as I began looking more mature, she suddenly had a friend to talk to about things like that. My aunt, who was more withdrawn than my mother, also started paying me attention when I started getting older. Kids kind of freaked her out, so even though she lived under the same very small roof as I did, she didn't really talk to me until I was around 9 or 10, and that's when she decided she had found herself a friend as well. So there I was, a child, and also the best friend and emotional support system of two emotionally needy women who were supposed to be raising me.

 

Meanwhile, my grandmother still wreaked havoc on all of our lives. She was like a smoldering fire that would erupt without warning at any time. She would randomly cause some sort of ruckus, and "the girls" as she called them would rally around to please her. Sometimes she wanted her raging to result in declarations of worship and unending love, and sometimes she would just rile everyone up. No matter what the result, her screaming fits of terror would always involve mountains of insults and accusations, usually starting off with some grain of truth and then escalating into something that really had no basis in reality. Sometimes the focus of her rage wasn't us, it was men, in general. She had been married three times, and had never been happy. The topic of the horrible nature of men would excite her for hours, which instead of convincing me what pricks men were, led me to understand that it wasn't men that was the problem in her life. Around the time I was 10 or so, she remarried her first husband and moved down the road. We were required to visit them almost every waking hour we weren't at school or work. I was hardly ever allowed to see friends outside of school, or spend time with myself even. When we spent time with them, it was to listen to them complain about each other, get in fights, or just complain about other things in life. Many times when we came over, she was mad at her husband, and demand that we all join her in a back bedroom to sit and stew. This was our duty, as offspring, and this was my life growing up, sitting in a dark bedroom with my grandmother, mother and aunt feeling being taught to hate men and life in general. If I missed a day of going over to grandmother's to sit in this misery, I was given huge guilt trip. In fact, guilt was the way of life. Even if I did everything I was supposed to, visited grandmother for hours and hours and agreed with all the misery she spewed from her mouth, indulged my mother in all her whims and desires to be with me and have me do things for her (or let her do things for me, which is another weird part of our relationship) to show how much I love her and that I do, in fact, love her enough, if I ever was happy about anything, I was immediately brought down by guilt. They would find something to make me feel guilty about, and often they used the suffering of Jesus, and how I could never repay Jesus back for what he did for me by dying on the cross. Mostly, what they really meant was that I could never pay them pay for what they did for me, (i.e. feeding me, clothing me, providing me with shelter, and indulging me with treats). I was told almost every day that I either couldn't do enough to pay them or Jesus back. I was even made to feel guilty for doing homework and not talking to them or spending time with them. However, if I ever made a B instead of an A, which I did only a couple of times, the **** poured down like a monsoon. The first time I made a B, my mother broke down into one of her helpless pitiful states and cried for three hours because she thought I was never gonna make it to college. And this was what it was like to be my mother's child, she would sink into this bottom-less pit of grief and self-pity, and she would reach out to me to fill her up. Of course, the more I gave to her, the deeper her need grew. I was also alternately praised and insulted in the same breath almost daily, and I soon associated praise with the feeling of insults. I put up massive walls to deal with all of the games and turmoil, and proceeded to live inside myself. The person I was on the outside usually just did whatever would do the least amount to stir up trouble, and although my quiet nature was often praised, it would often incite rage within them because I my quietness was evidence that I didn't love them enough or try enough to please them. A truly good and pleasant child would loved her elders be cheerful, funny, and entertaining, which I was sometimes, but because I wasn't that way all the time, I was a bad, selfish kid. Being happy was wrong, but being unhappy was wrong too. Once when I felt the pain so much that I confessed in my diary that I was depressed, I was dragged out of bed one morning and confronted by the three of them raging at me. They went on about how I was hiding that I was depressed, which was an extremely selfish condition that I should get over, and that I was just like my crummy father (who had stayed at a depression recovery center once). My grandmother told me to just get over it because only weak, evil people get depressed, and my mother looked me like I had committed the ultimate betrayal and said "You won't even tell me if you're depressed." I denied being depressed since they were making such a big thing about it, so they decided to break out the diary and shove things that I wrote in my face like I had committed some awful crime. My mother even started hitting me and pinned me behind a door until she got too tired. It was a mind**** of a situation.

 

I've already written quite a bit, and still there's so much to say and I feel like I haven't began to accurately describe the situation. But I have definitely given a taste of it.

 

Today I am 26, I live about 200 miles away (which isn't far enough). I am married to a psychologically stable man who doesn't play emotional games. Soon after I left home, I did find myself with a boy who was actually a lot like my mother, very needy and dependent on me. There was a certain time in that relationship that we started playing those intimacy games my mother used to play with me which made me feel really bad. I got pulled into that for awhile but thankfully I was able to overcome it and move on. My current relationship is very stress-free, but I am still weighted down by the stress(mostly guilt, guilt, guilt, their biggest weapon) of my childhood. A few years ago I came clean to my mother and told her that the way she and the rest of the family behaved towards me caused me inordinate amounts of stress, pain and anxiety. I told her that the situation was extremely dysfunctional, and I needed time away. She of course, pulled the pity thing again, but actually said that she understood. Both she and my aunt sort of lived through me, and when I went off to college and started dating someone, this inspired them to find boyfriends online, who they married. I don't know much about their relationships, so I don't know how healthy they are, and I don't really want to know. When I was still living with them in high school and would have boys interested in me, or have friendships in general, they would make it their business to know every little thing about my friends, or boyfriends, both in a concerned, but also a vicarious-way. They were extremely jealous that I was making outside connections with the world. It was really hard for me to actually have boyfriends since I wasn't really allowed to date, but I did have a few little romance-type things, and they were obsessed with it. I would sometimes try to deal with my life by writing in a diary and they would read everything. They would listen to phone conversations, and try to find IM conversations on my computer. But, I digress. They are now married, which is a relief to me because as sick as it was, I thought that it was my role to fill that emotional need that a spouse can fill. I am eternally thankful that they both now have someone besides myself they can turn to to provide that. That being said, I still have enormous guilt for not being a good enough daughter, granddaughter, niece. Just the fact that I don't live near them and barely talk to them proves that I have made gestures to try to distance myself from them, but I can't completely let go. When I do talk to my mom, although she is better, she still plays very hurtful emotional games with me and writes even trickier emotional letters. She wants sooo badly to be my friend and know about every aspect of my life. She even leaves me messages or asks me questions about what I think about certain things just so she can know what to think about it. She has never formed her own opinions, but looked to others to completely and utterly make up her mind about things (it's usually been either my grandmother or me). Now, her husband does most of that from what I can tell, but she still wants my opinions as well. It's gotten to the point where when we do talk, I can't say anything casual because she blows it out of proportion. It can be as simple as her asking what soft drink I like, and me replying that I don't usually drink soft drinks, but every so often I'll have a Coke. Next thing I know, she's either sent me articles about how bad for your soda is, or sent me cases of the stuff. It makes me scared to say anything to her, because any little thing I say suddenly defines me as a person. She can't just let me exist, and be casual about things, and that drives me further and further away, and yet I feel guilter and guilter because I know she isn't happy. Even though I know that her unhappiness really doesn't have anything to do with me, the simple fact that she looks to me to give her happiness makes me think that it's my role to give it to her. For example, when I was very young, she used to say that when I got older, I should give her jewelry. This stuck with me, and I thought it would make her happy, so for a few years with what money I had I gave her jewelry as present because I thought it would be at least something she would enjoy. Just last year, we met up for my birthday and she was wearing a necklace I gave her, and I thought, good, at least she did enjoy that. So I told her she looked good in it, which she did. A few weeks later, she sent the necklace to me in the mail because I "liked it so much" WTF and I supposed to do? I usually don't even read her letters anymore because it always messes with my head and I get really depressed after. I can't take most of her calls for the same reason. I'm usually a workaholic just to have an excuse to be to busy to call or drive to visit. I know it's really more an excuse for myself than for them, because with them there is never an excuse enough to not communicate with them, and visit them. They want me to not work and go spend time with them because "life is short." They are right that life is short, and they have already taken a great deal of mine, and want to take the rest of it as well. When I was still more openly communicating with them and trying to explain how I felt about everything, they told me I was making up or overblowing things. During this time I would never lose my temper, I was trying to sort things out with them, but of course they dealt with what I was saying with the same rages and rampages. My aunt at some point actually told me that the truth was to painful to deal with, so we just shouldn't deal with it. In many ways that was a sign for me to back away, because they were so deep in their denial and madness they didn't want to get out. I often feel guilty about having fun because I'm having fun without them. I have long stretches where I feel okay just living my life and enjoying my husband and my friends and my accomplishments and I feel liberated, but I often get pulled back in by a phone call or a letter, and I get overcome with this sickening desire to go devote my life to them. I sometimes feel that I need to throw the life I've built without them away and to sacrifice myself to them because I don't deserve any of the happiness or relief I sometimes feel. I really need therapy, but unfortunately I don't have health insurance right now, and can't afford therapy. I am currently laying the groundwork to get insurance and started on therapy, but I can't right at this moment. I will as soon as I can because I know these thoughts are eating away at the quality of my life, and hurting my husband too. I think I went through a time when I was much healthier in my thinking, but my mom has recently gotten sadder and my grandmother is sick, and I'm feeling that old pull to go take care of them because they need me more than I do. I am regressing back to those old, haunted feelings. I know I have severe problems from these experiences, but I do think the difference is that ever since I've been very young I was alert to the problems, and have fought ever since to discover the root of my issues, and to analyze my own behaviors for traces of the abusive patterns and change them. Obviously right now my thought patterns are dangerous, so I'm trying to address them. I don't plan to have children, or if I do, to wait until I am mentally healthy enough to not damage them the way I was damaged. If that time never comes while I'm still young, then I simply won't have them. The last thing in the world I want to do is to continue the cycle. I've seen some recent studies that have shown that emotionally abused children have altered brain chemistry, and as adults experience stress differently than adults who were not abused. A large part of dealing with this is accepting responsibility for myself and taking steps to break the cycle and change behaviors, but when something is so ingrained in you when you are very young and malleable, it is very hard to heal the damage. I am firmly committed to being healed, but that doesn't mean this process isn't extremely hard.

[Eve]

*Mega Hugs*

 

Thank you for posting. You have a real talent for writing... very clear observations and explanations towards your intuitions.

 

I will have to think further before responding. Just know that it is possible to be whole regardless of previous unmet needs.

 

Regards,

Eve xx

[Montclair0011]

Save up your money for a good shrink - usually that kind that does not take insurance. Make sure you get someone with good training in psychodynamic therapy. Try to bargain for a lower fee--tell them upfront it's going to be long-term and you are short on $. If you live near a MAJOR city (like NY) you can go to a good institute and be part of a supervised training program for a much cheaper rate. You will need several years but you will be OK. You have good instincts for survival.

 

Don't have kids for a long time until you get this resolved. Don't go back to what you escaped from.

 

You are amazing. Keep up the good work.

[intelbag]

firstly redpaint, lots of sympathy. i went through a similar experience, i am a 29-y.o. male who was the child of two adult children. my mother's relationship to me borders on covert/emotional incest. there was the veiled manipulation and hurtful communication, i grew up having serious problems relating to women (and indeed men).

 

currently, im in a relationship with someone who wants to take my mother's place..i really have to fight to get my time and space for me to begin long-term therapy and commit to what is called 'inner child work'. the idea being that those wounded children that we were _live on inside of us_, raw and hurt. through various therapy types, these can be healed and 'integrated' with our current, healthy adult types (healthy cos we're still alive, and can function.)

 

yes it is very hard to heal the damage, yes, our brain chemistry and indeed structure was greatly influenced by the stresses and traumas of those crucial first few years, but i am glad that you are committed to healing because there IS help available, and we CAN have meaningful and one day happy lives. no, we may never be quite on the same timetable as those people who had healthy childhoods..but _that is not our fault_. when you can get to the point where you can accept THAT, i think healing has begun.

 

good luck

ben

[normal]

Much love to you. It is so strange how big an impact these moments in our lives have on us as adults. For you, this was a long time ago.....but I hear the pain never leaves.

 

Thank you for sharing, very inspiring.

[xAdDiktiOn]

i went through something similar to this growing up with my mother. atfirst, everything was alright but after 9/11 living only a few blocks away from the towers my mom suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and eventually this turned into skitzophrenia. she kept me trapped and away from family. friends, etc.. for 5 years until i was old enough to realize that she was sick. she believe that we were being followed and if i told her that wasn't true she would tell me i was one of them. if i made her mad she would cut herself and tell me i was a cu*t and that she hated me, etc.. eventually, i took shelter in other people's houses sick of her mind games and now im 17 and a foster child because of all of this. even so i miss her to death but she was driving me insane with her smothering and wanting me to think and feel however she does. she even tells me not to have friends and she's the only person in the world who cares about me. people say it's just words but coming from your own mother it's heartbreaking and can really fu*k up your mind.

[xAdDiktiOn]

also, no matter how much i want to help my mom like you want to help yours. i've realized there's nothing you can do to help her ultimately, she has to help herself.