Why I can't tell my story

[doubleAries]

I'm reading "Man's search for meaning" by Viktor Frankl. He was a psychiatrist who was also a concentration camp survivor. Christine Lawson quotes him a lot in the "Understanding the borderline mother" book in the witch chapter. And my T brought him up too. So when I saw it the other day in the book store, I bought it. I saw this in there: (this was when he's telling about being herded around like sheep on marches, and comparing the guards to mean dogs) "And we, the sheep, thought of 2 things only--how to evade the bad dogs and how to get a little food."  When I read this, I cracked up laughing really hard and then burst out crying. Too bad Frankl wasn't at my house--I could have shared a little "stolen" tuna with him! (you can read "the tuna fish incident" here: https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=172809.msg12026784;topicseen ) In the concentration camps, the prisoners weren't given enough food. My brothers and I had more to eat than these prisoners, of course, but our dilemma had a little twist that the Nazi's didn't think of---there was plenty of food at our house, but we weren't allowed to touch it. It was bottom of the barrel food (out of date meat, crushed bread, the cheapest generic mac and cheese available with no milk or butter to make it with, crap like that), and like a Nazi guard, my mom would then retreat to her "quarters" and binge on fine imported delicacies while we washed dishes and laundry. We didn't have a clothes dryer because "it cost too much to operate", so we had to hang the clothes on the line (even in winter) and then bring in this huge mound of laundry and fold it. This, from the sadist witch who bought HUNDREDS of dollars worth of sewing stuff and craft stuff every week--not to mention wigs for herself and a new car every year. Often we had to use laundry soap or hand soap to do dishes because us "greedy wasteful pigs" used too much dish soap (in other words, we were out of dish soap).

Here's the thing--it's too hard to explain what it was like growing up there. I can only tell stories about things that happened, but they are too out of context to convey what it was like. For example---when I was about 3 years old, my brother was running through the sprinkler in the front yard in his undershorts. I took off my shirt and pants and ran through the sprinkler with him, also in my underpants. My mom saw me and blew up. Told me I was a SLUT for taking my shirt off in front of my brother and gave me a whipping, all the while screaming at me that I was filthy, sinful, and slutty (I was 3 years old!). OK, so for years afterwards, during "devotions" (hours on our knees in front of the couch, praying for forgiveness of our numerous sins) I was instructed to not forget to beg forgiveness for my whorish behavior (among other things) when I took my shirt off in front of my brother. And she would also occasionally bring this "whore like behavior" up out of the blue in front of the whole family, maybe at the dinner table, or in the car on the way to grandma's house, or whatever. She'd be extremely disapproving about it (as well as the suddenness and out of context-ness of bringing it up--she was master at catching you off guard), so my stomach would lurch and I'd be deeply ashamed. OK, so lets call this 1 "thread" of life there. And there were many, many "threads" in the intersecting web. Understanding this particular thread, then, makes it a little easier to see why then I would be so mortified when, at 9 years old, my mom made me get out of the bathtub and wouldn't allow me to get a towel to cover myself, and called everyone into the dining room to look at a tick she found on someone's pants. I had to stand there naked in front of all the males in the house, after I had been deeply brainwashed and engrained about how EVIL, SLUTTY, and WHORISH nudity was. And she didn't just show us the tick. She went on and on, for about 10 minutes about how dangerous ticks are and how we should look for them and what we should do if we found one. And every several seconds she would look me straight in the eye with a knowing and gloating look, amused and finding pleasure at my embarrassment and humiliation. See, the story about the bathtub and the tick don't convey why I would be so humiliated without understanding other threads in the web. This makes it difficult to tell just parts of my story. I can't even tell the whole thing, because (a) it's too long, and (b) it jumps all over the place with "back stories". The "tuna fish incident" doesn't make that much sense (or convey the horror of "being caught" eating food) without explaining that we weren't allowed to eat food that was right there in front of us, while our tormentor sat on her bed, dreamily munching away on expensive, exotic delicacies. When she was done, she'd lock her bedroom door so we couldn't get to any of her "goodies". We of course, weren't allowed to even close our bedroom doors, let alone lock them. If we were caught with our doors closed or "lollygagging" around in our rooms (even with the doors open) we were whipped and given extra work detail.

Here's another quote from the Frankl book that jumped out at me: "At such a moment it is not the physical pain which hurts the most (and this applies to adults as much as to punished children); it is the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all."

That one didn't make me laugh--it just made me cry. He put into words what I have been struggling to express for a long time. In fact, all of a sudden (well, a couple of weeks now) I find myself crying a lot. Not over specific memories--more general. I guess it must be grief. Took me a while to identify that, because I was never allowed to have that.

[linusham]

doublearies.

I don't have much I can say because I can't even begin to imagine how awful your childhood must have been. I just wanted you to know that I read this post and it made me really ache for you and the pain you are going through.

I am sending you lots of hugs and love and good thoughts 

[Deb]

doublearies,

When I read this post, I saw what my sister would have been if she had thought she could get away with it. She would by good meat for herself and new clothes all the time. She is a shopaholic. But my oldest 2 neices ate hotdogs and cheap mac n cheese and wore second hand clothes. She did not humilate them sexually like your "mother" did, thank goodness. They were washing their own clothes at age 6. The youngest had the duty of making coffee and serving her at that age also. The oldest was kicked out at 14 because she wouldn't hand over her paycheck from a government job she had. There are some people, who should never be allowed around children. hugs to you.

[Zitronenbaum]

You might wonder why I am not ringing the pitty bell, I do, but I will give you a straight answer to it. I will cut it short answering your topic title:

I think there is a reason why that/this your/ours/many of ours/my/in general kind of Trauma makes you/us speechless. It calls for a different answers than speech (at least the one you are used to).

So if you want to follow that path, go look for an answer that helps you in another way not only supported by speech but at its center something substancial like an action not to be retaken (don't murder anyone, though) or an artist expression you stick to it, you will know when you hit it.

People who lost a dear one in a road accident invented the emergency room, at least here. So you probably have to look for the process to get you at that point.

People express their incredible hurt and rage to, as well as wisdom drawn from, a hostile world/mother/something by doing Metal Music, as well as they've done in the bible by telling: "This I have seen under the sun... .."

People managed to escape the Warshaw Ghetto and made escape others by not being sitting ducks, but take death at times, fight or save themselves at times, while being capable to run, fighting, but run. You can sacrifice yourself to others, and to yourself, the hurtfull thing being your decision.

I think this is how you have to deal with trauma, still mostly/at times not as much, tending to other things as your life support (it is a hurtfull conflict for a KZ trauma is imperative), you have to face it.

I don't think it is our BPDm talking to us, it is our nagging self, not at peace with it, yet. I think we can/should handle it without dying or killing ourselves, we should listen, there is a task within ourselves.

This task is reached by as much soothing and cuddling love you can imagine as well as taking out the big knives at times. We are the ones who did not get it the right way, but have to get it right, with much pain.

My dearest regards

[Zitronenbaum]

Addition: Get it right also by expressing it otherwhise or getting more grounded methods until it is on a speekable level. I think the thing you have to reach is throwing the agressor out or your life, by speech or else.

[Zitronenbaum]

And "we did not get it right" meant: We did not get the right kind of love but have to let something inside ourselves work out the consequence and maybe invent it anew.

[doubleAries]

thanks all.

zitronenbaum--I'm not looking for pity anyway, never have done well with pity (makes me suspicious).

But I can certainly relate to the concentration camp survivors desire to just express what happened to them. I am a firefighter and a first responder (more than fires--car wrecks, etc). Sometimes we see truly horrible things that require what are called "debriefings". This is where those of us on this horrible scene (and we're not just witnesses to something gory or awful--we have to do something about it and/or clean it up) sit around a circle and tell each other what we saw and how it made us feel. Sometimes the mind cannot grasp this horrid thing and it begins to take on a surreal quality. What also happens is the mind tries to normalize the experience in some way in order to know how to cope with this and possibly future horrid things. Thusly, the scene replays over and over and over in your head, even as it seems surreal. In this "debriefing" situation, we are able to assure each other that yes, that really did happen, yes, it really did look like that, yes, this or that body part really did do this or that. Simply saying out loud what you saw and/or had to do makes a tremendous difference. nightmares really are worse than reality. Saying it makes it real. Especially when others didn't have exactly the same experience, but something similar enough to validate that yes, this really was real. And yes, it sucked for them too.

I suppose I'm trying to do debriefings about my childhood. A car wreck scene lasts anywhere from 2 to 5 hours (depending on whether the coroner is needed and how long it takes him to get there). My childhood went on and on and on for years, and was even more complex than the car wreck.

In the DSM III there was an entry there that was removed from the DSM IV for political reasons. That entry was "Sadistic Personality Disorder". My mom fits all 11 of the 7 criteria perfectly   . In fact, she really fits Theodore Millon's subtype called "explosive sadist" (which is a Sadist PD with BPD features). This was removed from DSM IV, according to the wikipedia page, because contributors to DSM IV were afraid Sadists would use this diagnosis as an excuse in court. Doesn't change the fact that it exists.

In "Ethics", Spinoza said "Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it." And how we first begin to do that is through "debriefings". I don't know where to start.

[AfraidAndSad99]

Dear Double Aries

I may be off the mark, reading the other replies to your first post, but I absolutely think you're on the right track by trying to tell you story and "get it all out." Your story is eerily similar to my own (food deprivation, extreme "conservation" (we really were poor but not THAT poor) and the sexual punishment. That's the part that's so awfully creepy I can hardly focus my mind on it even to this day. So, in best denial form, I supress it. (It's been over 40 years but I can still see the picture of when she made me stand naked in front of a huge living room mirror for an hour for complaining about not wanting to wear a particular pair of "snowpants" because they made me look fat - which I was.) It still makes me gag. That nausea will probably never go away.

People recommend therapy and I've gone that route practically all my life, off and on since age 9. For depression - and is it any wonder! Go ahead - TELL YOUR STORY! It's NOT too shameful to hide from people (not ALL people of course, but some). I'm a list maker, so if you think your life is an infinite series of horrible experiences, maybe you can make a list and keep adding to it until you have most of it at least named (Excel has an infinite number of line numbers!). Yes, professional help, activity, reading,... .all the things that people here have recommended will help. But please, please do not feel that your life story cannot be told - to at least one person who understands and cares.

Yo go girl!

[Zitronenbaum]

Sry for being not a good advisor at the moment on working through the trauma in the aftermath when you are safe again, I am at war right now.

I once read a German book (In aller Liebe: With all Love: How mothers make their children unhappy.) that actually is copying or leaning on the Borderline mother Types of "Children of a Borderline Mother" in a more conceiled "yeah, but no one can expect a perfect mother we will overcome it by being more efficient/perfect" and pointing out and advising on the the flaws the children get from those mothers instead of calling :"outrage" or being empathic.

The way children, who were the only ones able to break the abusive Power of the Powermom (seduction-queen/witchtype - actually a witch-dictator with a civilized honorsome face: If you're not willing I'll use force), did it, after that book, by:

"Breaking the flute, immediately".

Story is: A boy was presented with a "gift", a flute, to force him learning to play the flute. He broke it on the kitchen table, immediately. A second flute was presented. He broke it again. After the third flute his mother stopped on the flute topic and never approached him with a flute again.

The book critizises that the children who actually did this kind of successfull resistance kept being stuck in the all or nothing "primitive" defence as adults.

That might be the truth, to the good or the bad. But maybe the psychologists that wrote the books never encountered someone you can deal only with by this on a personal basis, being trapped in your personal dictatorship or part-time KZ when comming home.

My T told me once: You can even learn from psycotics. So, maybe, the boy is someone to learn from first.

I can remember there was a headline: "Unconditional surrender", to a Master Borderline that made half the world bash each others heads in and another part mowing down a lot of humans who did not expect something that scale to actually happen to them, as most humans do not.

Those people stating the "UC" were no stupid, stubborn, socially retarded little boys. Or maybe they've been which saved us all.

So at the moment, for seemingly missing part of the lesson and needing to close the sipper from below or inventing the wheel anew, I am done with talking and actually practice to break some flutes no matter what, lets see the outcome.

Here are some suggestions why especially children of BPDms have trouble with talking, though talking it out and debriefing would be the right way at the right point to deal with trauma as it is used by adult victims of severe trauma that have been adult and might had a "life" before trauma:

This dictator mentioned above used the only art he exelled in, playing on early childhood damage, by pose and speech. The most vicious he could have derived from a borderline mother. He would make the world burn and kill itsself off, with personally being too much of a coward to actually touch anyone but himself, at the end he killed himself (one good deed makes up for a lifetime, lets hope for him). But, maaahhhn, he could talk the language of his time to raise hell, seemingly, like no one else. This is why his writings were forbidden. So language can be a toxic and evil weapon, big time. There might be more genuine and human ways to express, maybe we know about it. Would you fight your worst enemy with that one weapon you know he is top of the world? Probably we searched for another kind of language we did not dare to practice.

From verbal abuse, to staged conversation, false seducing promisses, how do you react to it? You stay silent and you do not talk back to an aggressor taking the bait.

If you actually overcome your BPD with more humanly grounded speech: she(he) will have learned it the next day. (At least pull of a fake template of your thing.) You do not want to equip your aggressor, do you?

From my own position: You might still be at war not having kicked the ass of your aggressor the right way. So part of you knows speech is just an escape to the real deal to get you out, and defies to betray yourself. If you are at war you cease the talk and act.

There is "right and wrong" language. There is at one pole split-off "head" language for another purpose, or even defence to not talk from your feelings and split you off from your feelings: Split off language is represented by abstract words or Latin in English (Multitudinous seas incarnadine, brilliant), and there is "trauma-language", and other ways of expression to address the soul or feelings, like Shakespear made psychotics regain there feelings and many of us read literature or view meaningfull movies for they can reconnect to their feelings by it.

We have encountered our aggressors before hitting the speech barrier where might part of the trauma has been realising the dissonance of content of speech and posing towards real felt emotions and actions, and speech, if you actually put it together by the meaning, not the display, sliced our hearts. To learn understand language was to receive the trauma that love was a lie, the biggest trauma of all.

Mother smiled and said: A mother always loves her child but at times I'could kill you, darling. And actually, understanding that mother is telling daddy behind the kitchen door that you, that impossible (namecalling) child has to be disposed of for she can't bear it anymore. (This is no fairytale, this happened to me, while she stuck out her head at times to do a sharkgrin and tell me that all is alright and she loves me, through the very kitchen door.) The moment we could tell what a lie is and actually understood content of speach is where we realised the truth so our trauma has to do with probably staying away from the speech barrier/thing for the hurt took place there and all toppled of. We might got blown a whole into our heart by speech. And we might figured speech was wrong the way it was used in our family.

Than there is a staying true to ourselves: I remember Mr. Arno Gruen once wrote that for he did not partake in the talking while observing his destructive family members backstabbing each others as a child he could keep his own view of things. "By not telling my oppinion I could stick to it."

Since speech is an instrument of split and lie, avoiding it for us might guard our wholeness.

Talk the talk but can't walk the walk is a BPDs label. (See point 1 and 2)

We have hit trauma at an age where expression by speech is not available and we would use other ways if actually someone asked us to express ourselves.

Being under the hurt of early pain takes away your breath. You probably physically will not be able to speak but only sit it through.

You do not talk to a person that hurt you but withdraw. The only people around for a long time in our life might have been people that hurt us.

So language might be a point we or a part of us faces "issues" with.

I took advice from a lot of people though I personally disgust some of them or their ways (part of it probably selfhate but for being not sure I won't take my chances - still I would keep up the advice to listen to your "enemies" for with trauma it is an upsidedown world you might find yourself aggressing the wrong aggressor), and have experimented and looked for a way to deal with my faith throughout my whole life.

A lot of psychologist and human oriented people came to the conclusion that plugging into and regaining your feelings makes your personal truth accessable to actually bubble up and be transformed into speech later, maybe with some creative outcome. I personally think in our case being able to plugg in and hold tight to our first hand experince, feelings and true story stored in our body and self by accessable ways is an important choice.

We do not deal with the same trauma as an adult in a KZ, whe have been alongsided by it since birth and before dealing with it in adult ways.  

There are many reasons why dealing by just starting to tell our story might be a goal but the first choice to actually get us there might be different.

So my advice would be to look for additional grounded methods to add and help you grow into the capacity of the debriefing you want to do, being on accessing feelings and wholistic experience, if you keep on not being satisfied or finding a starting point. And using the language of people whose work actually spoke to your soul before as well as other ways of expression. (If you have people close and understanding it probably is best to try out part of your telling with them, but I don't know if you have those.)

If you want to find a way your soul wants to talk using language you could f.e. try focussing: It is a method where you wait for a bodyshift when you found the right verbal expression your whole being agrees with.

Maybe there is something else or additional needed to help us talk, tools not necessary to adult encounterers of trauma. Hope you find it.

DR

[doubleAries]

This has been a pretty intense time for me--like Zitronenbaum, I have been at war. For a long time. I haven't even had contact with my mother for 22 years, so the war is now starting to get old (and nonsensical). For the first time in my life, I am beginning to feel something besides anger for what happened to me. It is a relief, but also disconcerting. Anger has been my protection for a long time. The only protection I've ever known. And even that had to be secret (when I was a kid). As an adult, it didn't have to be secret anymore. But has only achieved bitterness and disillusionment.

After spending an entire childhood as a POW, I'm tired of the war and want to go "home"... .wherever that is. Not a place, but a frame of mind. The war could never have been won by me, the prisoner, anyway. At times (as an adult who was no longer dependent on the witch), I even believed perhaps I could win. Delusion. The sadist BPD is master of the coliseum, and attempting to beat her at her own game is masichistic insanity. I don't want to "win". I want to live.

When my father decided to divorce my mother (when I was an infant) and get custody of me, she turned him in to the draft board and he was sent to Vietnam. Then she moved her newest boyfriend into my fathers house. When my father returned from Vietnam, he never failed to pick me up for visitation. he was my knight in shining armor who rescued me from the evil witch. Until he started molesting me at 7 years old, that is. Then "visitation" became simply going from one hell to another and then back again.

For each of us, including myself, telling our story is important. But I don't want to get stuck in an endless loop of "war stories" and bitterness. I must remain focused on my goal--becoming a well adjusted person who is learning the things I didn't learn as a child (like what love and nurturance look and feel like), justice (not simply revenge), and the only thing I can actually change--myself. I'm tired of being angry, and I'm tired of being a victim. My brothers believe the best course of action is to "don't dwell on it, put it in the past, don't think about it". Which (as the no good scapegoat child, I have been unable to do) doesn't seem to have worked out too well for them. As Spinoza said, suffering ceases to be suffering when you form a clear and precise picture of it. I didn't even know there was a name for what I grew up with. I knew my mom was a mean whacko, but I didn't know what was wrong with her. Therefore her power seemed infinite (and indeed, it's not like she just let me go when I grew up and moved away (actually, she threw me out of the house when I was 15 years old). She stepped up her campaign of destruction to whole new levels at that point. She couldn't take a belt to me anymore, or punch me in the face, so she sabotaged my life behind my back in spectacular ways.

nc has been the only peace I've ever had, the first time in my life that I was able to sort out my own thoughts, feelings, and beliefs instead of simply reacting to her drama/crisis/rage du jour. It was the beginning of forming that clear and precise picture. Stumbling my way to therapy this year (6 months ago) has made it even clearer. It was my therapist who put a name to the madness---BPD. AHA! It was my therapist who said "that wasn't severe abuse, that was torture". AHA! My therapist who pointed out my duty to myself (in different words, but still the same old saying: living well is the best revenge).

When my mom cut off the heads of my pet rabbits and tried to force me to eat them (I wouldn't/couldn't---an act of "defiance" that earned me a severely twisted C1 vertebrae that still isn't fixed), I don't think it was just "punishment" that she had in mind. It was to cripple.

I've never been able to "suppress" any of this. Neither have my brothers, though they try mightily. I feel like a freak, though. What a load of baggage! Why would any "normal" people want to know me? It's taken me years to make friends that aren't "broken". But I can't tell them much about my "baggage", because they cannot understand or fathom it. Recently, a friend I've had for a while now is now avoiding me. We had a conversation about "abuse", and she said "oh, sure--most of us come from dysfunctional families. It's OK, we can talk about it". She did not define her version of "dysfunction" or "abuse" and I, of course, misread the cue. I started pouring out some of my tales and she, stunned and horrified, hasn't contacted me since. Perhaps she doesn't believe me. Perhaps she just doesn't know what to say and thinks she's supposed to give condolences, or sympathy and doesn't know how in this case. I don't know. But I have that feeling of being a freak. And when I seek out people who carry similar baggage, I find many of them are reduced to blubbering basket cases and I don't fit in there either. So at times, I feel like some kind of imposter with a big secret.

Sigh... .just because the war is over doesn't mean you get to leave the arena.

[Zitronenbaum]

I've never been able to "suppress" any of this. Sigh... .  just because the war is over doesn't mean you get to leave the arena.

This is your humanity

[Zitronenbaum]

Hi Aries, I hope you are still out there, don't give up.

[doubleAries]

Hi Zitronenbaum,

I'm still here. And it has always been my blessing/curse to never give up.

"Funny"... .  I sent one of my brothers a link to the youtube video of the daughter of the judge in Texas whipping her with a belt for some internet violation. He had exactly the same reaction as I did--"That's NOTHING! What's she crying about?" and then sympathy and empathy.

My T explained yet another AHA moment to me recently---in Lawson's book, she says no BPD mother is a witch all the time. And that is correct--if she is a BPD. If she IS a witch all the time, then she isn't a BPD. She's a Sadistic Personality Disorder with BPD features. There aren't any SPD Family chat forums that I've found   because there just aren't that many SPD's. Maybe less than 1/2% of BPD's are SPD's.

Learning what I was up against as a kid has been both frightening and enlightening. It's tough, too--there is a lot good info around on this website about how to better deal with your BPD person. But realistically, you don't "deal better" with a sadist. You run as fast and as far away as you can. But this has also left me ill equipped to deal with regular BPD's (and I do run across them--imagine that). It's better to learn to face things and build strong boundaries around our values. But I'm not sure how one would go about that with a sadist. So I am not interested in having contact with her ever again.

But this is the longest "debriefing" in the world!

[ScarletOlive]

doubleAries, I'm so sorry for the horrors you endured. You really are an inspiration for me because of your strength of character and will. I honestly have no idea how you do it, but you are amazing.

Truly, I do agree that one can never really grasp the atrocity or the "full story." However, if you do want to tell your story, those here will listen, validate, and be here for you. I'll sit with you and listen, no matter how bad it gets. It's ok to not tell too. For a while I wanted to post my story everywhere possible (I don't do that anymore). Whatever you want to tell or need to tell is ok.

Sending you lots of caring and support.

[doubleAries]

ScarletOlive,

Thank you so much. 

Couldn't have come at a better time for me, too. I'm just starting to connect with a lot of feelings from my childhood (beyond the anger at my mom). It's a little overwhelming. Had to leave work a few days ago because I couldn't stop crying (good thing I'm the boss, so I can't get fired!   ) and i wasn't even sure why I was crying. Had to sit down and go through a checklist until certain items made my stomach hurt 

And mostly people don't find me to be an inspiration. My stories make them so uncomfortable that they don't know how to respond, so they begin to avoid me. It's horribly frustrating, and makes me angry all over again--like I'm broken, but only by default! It's not me they can't deal with--it's the stories about my childhood. Isolated AGAIN!

So I either inadvertantly chase people off by being honest, or I keep my mouth shut and feel like I'm living the life of an imposter with a big secret.

A few weeks ago, I was over at some relatively new friends house for lunch, and the woman asked, all chipper, "do you like tuna fish?" and I busted up laughing and said "yeah--amazingly, I do" and she was very puzzled. But I couldn't really explain. So I just looked like a very strange person... .  

[ScarletOlive]

Safe hugs right back atcha dear one.   I'm sorry things have been so hard on you lately. Good for you for taking some time off. You deserve some TLC.

It's ridiculous that the legacy of abuse leaves wounds and causes isolation when it occurs, and then drives people away even after because they still can't handle it. You so deserve to be believed and listened to.

The tuna fish comment is so sad but I couldn't help but laugh too. I can relate somewhat. People ask if I want to sew, and I just say, "Oh I don't sew." It's not like I can say, "Oh, I have PTSD from my mom forcing me into slave labor at the sewing machine for 13 hour days, breaking 5 labor laws in my country." Either way they look at you funny, but actually telling the truth leaves them gaping in search of words.

Please know though that you're not strange or an impostor. You're a pretty darn awesome survivor.