I think it's therapeutic when it uncovers the truth after believing a lie for so long.  Something that happened when you were little and then felt guilt and shame.  Remember now and realizing, I was only a little kid and putting the responsibility back on the adults who were in charge and had all the control.  Putting the accountability back on them.  Gets you geared towards healthier relationships as uncomfortable as they are sometimes.  Getting more uncomfortable with unhealthy people and holding those boundaries.

My sister would flit around, now I'm upset about this, now I'm upset about that.  It gave her reason to be upset.  She is diagnosed with BPD.  It was like she just wanted to be upset.

Below is a good statement of objectives for remembering from the guide:
 
A critical part of recovering from child abuse is learning to distinguish what really happened to you and whether it constituted child abuse. In this next section, we will be facing the reality of child abuse frankly. The purpose of this review is:
 

• not to deny the past but to illuminate it;

• not to indict your parents/abusers, but to hold them responsible; and finally,

• not to blame yourself, but to develop a new understanding of your experience.

Your ability to understand the complexity of factors involved in your abuse will serve you well in making the past less overwhelming and threatening.
 

It's interesting to read on the "Raising a BPD Child" board.  Sometimes I see a thread and it's pretty clear that it is the mother that is having the issue, not the child.  I know this has been mentioned here before.  In that same way, the reverse is true, too - sometimes we are  having the issue, not the parent.  When there is BPD in a family, it can be very hard to for us to see what is:
 
     our stuff (child) <||> their stuff (parent)
 
These questions from the guide are helpful to identifying what is abuse and what is not (sample):
 
Physical Abuse
 
1.   Did your parents punish you by hitting you with a hand or some implement until you were bruised or injured?
2.   Were you slapped in the face and left with a black eye, bloody nose or bruised cheek?
3.   Were you ever punched, kicked or thrown against the wall?
 
More questions... .
 
Sexual Abuse
 
6.   Did your parent or another adult purposely expose his/her body to you?
7.   Did anyone have sexual contact with you when you were a child that left you confused or feeling ashamed?
8.   Were you ever shown sexual pictures or films or were you ever photographed undressed or provocatively posed?
 
More questions... .
 
Emotional Abuse
 
11.   Did your parents frequently rant and rave about what a horrible, stupid or ugly child you were?
12.   Did they involve you in some illegal activity?
13.   Did your parents prevent you from having friends?
14.   Did they refuse to take you to the doctor when you were sick (absent religious constraints)?
 
More questions... .
 
I think it really helps to focus in on the truly abusive events - grasp them - hold someone responsible - learn how this affects us - learn how to process them.  Making a list is helpful. Discussing specific events in detail is helpful. Then we can help each other characterize it (severe abuse, abuse, not ideal, etc.), break it down, grieve it, and process how it has affected our lives and how we can redirect ourselves.

Good points, everyone.

Like DreamGirl, it's hard for me to talk about my upbringing sometimes, because it forces me to face some difficult things about myself. It's especially hard remembering some of my behavior towards others as I was growing up and as a young adult.

Why is it important to remember the abuse as we heal?

For me, it's the best way to understand why I've done some of the things I've done and helps me identify and deal with some of my triggers. In some ways it helps the healing process.

What do we hope to gain from remembering the abuse?

There are parts of me that have been deeply wounded, and remembering them and dealing with them with the tools I've learned is how I can heal and move on.

What are some of the there a right or wrong ways we remember at bpdfamily?

We all need to have a pity party on occasion. I do think that's part of the healing process. It's important, though, to move beyond and really look at how you can take a sad/painful/triggering memory and turn that into a chance to learn and grow from the experience. Everyone who has arrived here has been through a somewhat similar experience, and sometimes we need to give each other a nudge towards dealing with those tough memories.

How can we tell the difference between remembering and ruminating and injury submersion?

To me, it comes down to the reasoning behind the sharing. By remembering, you're looking to learn and grow, and that can be painful, but can also result in a more positive long-term outcome. Ruminating and injury submersion don't add to the healing process. They can help build a sense of community and establish rapport, but don't really bring any long-term comfort.

Thanks for the information.  I wanted to say that I find it helpful to share and think that by sharing with others perhaps I can help them.  Maybe we all need to add (or it is an idea at least) how what was  shared has affected us at the end of our post and how we are able/unable to find something postive in it.  For example, in my post about privacy, I tried to get across that this made me realize why I was supersensitive to privacy issues, not to say, "mom spied on me."   I was called every vile, vulgar curse word from childhood on and had so many emotional abusive stories such as being told to die, I should have been aborted, constantly berated on my appearance (when I seldom got this elsewhere, thankfully) that I could "ruminate"  all day ( I was also physically abused often) but I admit that I am afraid to share my more shocking stories for being seen as ruminating on the board.  I do thank you guys for the clarification.  I think sharing is also helpful because so many of us, thinking we "were the only one" think it is our fault and that we are flawed.  Seeing that others suffered similar things shows us, I feel, that maybe it was not us after all.  I think it is easier to see "our part" in the abuse, for instance, as adults setting/ not setting boundaries, but really, what part did we play- as in fault- as six year olds?  At any rate, thank you all again for the responses.  Maybe we should start a thread about how the abuse has made us grow positively.  In my case, it has made me more compassionate of others and aware of signs in children of potential abuse at home

I need a big ol' workshop on reparenting.  Is there one around here?  I mean, I understand the skills I am lacking due to the funky childhood but don't I need a good parent to model to reparent?  Where do I get one of those?  Do I find people that are healthy and glob onto them?     Or read books on how to be a good parent?  I'm being silly but I'm really serious.

I agree. We have to forgive ourselves--remembering brings on a lot of shame and guilt in many of us. I think that's what's so painful about remembering vs. ruminating or injury submersion. When we remember as part of the healing cycle, we have to revisit the shame we felt as children.

That's a good point. I think it's about looking at the overall picture. We all need to get our feelings out and be heard, and the members who are in the further stages of healing seem to be challenging themselves and pushing themselves. Healthy, IMO, means being able to recognize the abuse for what it is/was and grow from it. I also think that they're more likely to offer support to others.

How can you tell when someone else is going through a healthy stage of processing the abuse?

For me, one of the most important reasons for remembering the abuse that happened is so I can see my part (no, it's not "fault" in it. The coping methods I learned during those times became deeply ingrained, automatic. I created "survival skills" that were necessary at the time, but that are no longer necessary, and in fact, often hinderances. Revisiting (if you will) some of these past abuse events helps me understand the source of my "coping skills" so that I can better change and update them. If I do not change/update them, then I unconsciously invite similar situations into my life in a misguided attempt to relive the situation and attempt to change the outcome (hasn't worked well so far    )

In my situation, it's not too hard to sort the abusive from the "regular". In fact, some of what I consider "regular" would still be considered abusive. My mother is a Sadistic Personality Disorder with Borderline features. Abusiveness made her feel better. Here's an example, as well as an example of the point of revisiting the past (in my family, this particular incident was called "the tuna fish incident" and it was what we would call a "medium velocity" incident--there were many much worse, and many not quite as bad)

My mom had a weird thing about food. She didn't like any of the rest of us to eat and constantly called us "filthy greedy pigs" for eating food (not our eating habits--just eating food at all). She would buy the cheapest food she could find for the family, and expected a gallon of milk to last a family of 6 for at least a week. When it did not, a massive rage would ensue that sometimes entailed harsh verbal abuse, and sometimes entailed physical abuse as well (beatings with belts or boards or electric cords until she drew blood, punching, kicking, etc). Then she wouldn't buy any milk again for several weeks, as punishment for our "greediness". none of us were allowed to eat food without explicit permission--ever. And often, permission was denied. But at the same time, she regularly bought hundreds of dollars worth of expensive, exotic, and imported foods for herself that she kept under the bed in her bedroom (away from us filthy greedy pigs).

OK, so with that backstory, here's what happened: when I was about 11 years old, I was really hungry (it was summer time--during the school year, I secretly frequently ate food out of the trash can at school that the other kids through away--this was not available during summer vacation). I had already been denied permission to eat food, but I was seriously hungry. So I snuck into the kitchen and looked for something I thought might not be missed by anyone else. There were 10 cans of tuna fish in the cabinet, so I took my chance with one of those. Ate part of it in my room and hid the rest (carefully--it smells!). I was caught almost immediately. A 4 hour "interrogation" ensued, that included punching, slapping, spitting in my face, hair pulling, etc. At the "end", my mom dumped the remaining tuna in a bowl, opened the other 9 cans of tuna and dumped them also in the bowl, and told me that since I was so greedy I could just eat all of it. Right now. With my hands (there were lots of curse words and screaming involved in this "request" as well). I ate as much as I could, and when I couldn't eat any more, she started shoving it down my throat herself. When I puked in the bowl, she became enraged and shoved my face in it and ground it in. My stepdad finally meekly intervened and she turned her rage on him and I escaped.

What was my part in this? 2 things. (1) For many years (until this year, in fact) I believed that I was at least partly responsible for what happened--even though I thought her reaction was "overboard"--because I STOLE a can of tuna. I continue to eplore the myriad ways this kind of thinking has effected the way I interact with people as an adult. (2) I felt immense guilt (and sort of still do) that my stepdad unfairly took some of "my" punishment. When I tell myself that he was an adult, and actually should have intervened more strongly and more often, I feel guilty for thinking that.

These kind of thought patterns are not serving me well. They serve to create dysfunction in my interactions and relationships, lead to serious codependency problems.

So when I "revisit" past abuse, I most often ask myself "and then what did I do?" This is not to continue to blame myself for what happened, but to see what my reaction was, so I can see why I think the way I do, why I react the way I do. So that I can begin the process of changing those ingrained, automatic (unconscious) patterns.

To this day my "self-talk" (which is ingrained and ignored on the conscious level) is beyond rude--it's severely abusive. Self abusive. It's a long slow process changing it. I see that my mind ruminates over these past events until I consciously pay attention and ask the next step process: "and then what did I do?"

Perpetual victimhood is useless. I must grow.

doubleAries, your point about focusing on WHAT we did - without judging it! - is very well-taken.  

I hadn't thought about it that way, but it's true that when my focus shifted from my mother and what she was thinking and what she thought of me, etc., to what *I* had wanted out of the relationship, what I still wanted and felt was missing in my life, I started changing.  

I started feeling freer to make different choices, and able to leave the endless loop of obsessing why someone else acted the way they did.  Judging ourselves (and others!) offers a feeling of control, but as you point out it's really so much more helpful to just understand ourselves, why we made the choices we did in the situations that continue to haunt us, and what that illuminates about the hopes and fears that still drive us today.  

Actions can be helpful or unhelpful in accomplishing a particular purpose, and so right or wrong in those circumstances, but what our fundamental drives are, what we love and what we hate, what scares us, gives us a much deeper insight into ourselves, and really don't apply to those moral categories.  It's never right or wrong to want love, to fear pain, to try to function successfully in the life circumstances we find ourselves in.  

Seeing ourselves in that way helps us love ourselves unconditionally, as people who want what all people want - love, safety, and peace.  Rather than trying to control ourselves as tools to accomplish certain goals - which is the way I experienced my mother's view of me.  

Remembering helps us stop denying and minimizing the abuse. It becomes out in the open, where we can feel the emotions, and process them. There, we can begin to peel away the negative scripts that we apply to ourselves-I'm guilty, shameful, ugly, etc. When we share our stories, we can receive validation, reassurance, and the knowledge that we're not alone.

I think the line for ruminating and remembering healthily lies between over-sharing for the sake of receiving pity, and not sharing at all. If we don't look at the abuse, we can't really heal because we can't face it. If we pour out our guts-abuse and annoying childhood things-we can't really heal then either because we're stuck on feeling self-pity. Healing comes when we can face the abuse and feel pity for our young selves, but keep moving forward.

We will get stuck at times (I've gone to both ends of the spectrum and gotten stuck there), but that's ok. It seems to me that as long as we focus on healing, we can get unstuck again.

I love this thread, and how timely it is in my healing.  Currently reprocessing memories and recalling buried ones--started as the silent treatments from recent ex started.  Familiar FOO feeling led to it. 

Happily started schema therapy last week to really drill down.  Ready for the bumpy ride!

I think I've struggled with this issue quite a lot.  Many years ago, it was recommended to me to do a psychodrama program.  Now, I think that hurt me incredibly because it re-traumatized me in ways that dysregulated me.  I needed to really be resourced as I recovered memory and became more able to gradually see and assimilate the experiences of having been abused, abandoned and betrayed as a child. A sudden, jarring, supposedly "cathartic" experience just re-traumatized me and sent me into uncontollable depression, grieving and rage.

What I have learned since is that regaining memories and gaining a new understanding of myself and my experience, giving up denial and minimization and gaining an integrated understanding that I was abused, neglected and betrayed by the people who were supposed to love me, is extremely important.  But most of all in the presence and with the support of a competent, effective, caring therapist and a community of friends who are loving and supportive.  In other words, we repress the memories in an environment that is abusive and unloving, our inner life goes underground and we can only truly re-surface in an environment that is safe and loving.  The re-traumatizing through something like a psychodrama was injurious because I wasn't resourced, I wasn't given a safe environment in which to feel all of my feelings, all of the feelings which were not allowed in my family of origin.

One of the most terrifying things about remembering what really happened is that it challenges the official narrative of my uBPD mother and my enabling and dis-ordered father, trying to cover up his collaboration and appeasement of the BPD.  There was a massive cover-up of the abuse by them, a framing of it as "discipline" or as a response to my "bad" behavior. They accused me of being "sensitive," ungrateful, a flake, you know the usual script of the BPD and the enabling, denying parent. So, I needed to splice these parts of reality out of the story, "forget" them, minimize them dismiss them as a figment of my imagination, because they challenged my mother and father's fragile sense of self.  And the response of my parents to challenging their reality, when I was a child, was physical pain, emotional abuse and abandonment or threats of abandonment.  Too terrifying for a child to hold memories of those things in such an environment.

To regain those memories as an adult, to talk about them openly, to assert yes, this was all terrible abuse of children, is to bring up the old terror, yes terror of annihilation and abandonment.  So, it is so important to recover all of this resourced by safe and loving people, which of course we did not have when we were children.  And it is so important to reframe that inner reality by bringing it to the light of consciousness because our bodies know.  And if we don't remember we are fractured people, at war within ourselves, maybe not to the same degree as our BPD parent or our enabling parent.  But I know that true joy for me lies in finally becoming a truly integrated person, where my mind, spirit and body, all aspects of my being are in accord, all are integrated.  Living with a fragmented uBPD mother and a weak and capitulating father, cut off from his strength made that impossible for me as a child.  Now, to regain the memories and deeper understanding of what went on, in the presence of love and support, and emotional resources I never had as a child, makes that integration and fullness possible for me, day by day.  I stop having a part of me punishing and sabotaging myself and bring all of what is inside me in the service of growth, thriving and love. My mind listens to my body, and I can truly feel and act from within.

Thanks again,

Calsun

I think this is the hardest thing for me. It has caused me to accept abusive relationships as normal, and unhealthy and unbalanced friendships. Not knowing what is healthy and unhealthy has really hurt me in my ability to enforce boundaries.

Why is it important to remember the abuse as we heal?

For me - it is going back to validating my experiences as a child - I knew my mother's behaviour was wrong but I was constantly gaslighted by BOTH my parents. I was the problem in the family. There was something wrong with ME - and that narrative didn't change until I was in my thirties and started to put down boundaries, that is I walked out of their house during holiday get togethers because I was no longer accepting to be scapegoated.

What do we hope to gain from remembering the abuse?

Perspective. Understanding how the abuse affects us today and how we can work through it so that it no longer affects our present.

What are some of the there a right or wrong ways we remember at bpdfamily?

I'm not sure there is a right or wrong way - everyone has their own path. Sometimes remembering and acknowledging is good enough. If it comes out as anger I don't think it's a bad thing. As long as it's allowed to bubble to the surface.

How can we tell the difference between remembering and ruminating and injury submersion?

I don't know what injury submersion is.

What is meant by "validate the valid but don't validate the invalid"?

Perhaps that it is valid that we were powerless to stop the abuse as children, but as adults we have power to take control of our lives and move on from the abuse and we owe it ourselves to do that.

I don't remember ever feeling debilitated.

However,  my mom brought up the time when I was 14 and age was raging on my so much that I feel to the ground and had a seizure.  My reaction was thy culmination of a few years... .living like 1884 with no electricity or plumbing (literally cropping in the woods), eating meals cold from dented canned food---later eating government cheese was a step up,  running from multiple county agencies and the sheriff, taken out of school for 3 months in 8th grade (no home school), being caught by CPS... .I'd survived and moved past it by decades. When my mom said,  "remember that time you had a seizure? That was the only time I may have abused you." Why would she bring it up over two decades later? It pissed me off. It wasn't debilitating to me,  but it was invalidating.

I remember it all,  VERY well,  but I don't feel it healthy to write a book,  despite so many people on my life encouraging me to do so over the years. 

Hey, Turkish. I don’t recall feeling debilitated either. I remember feeling fear, but for whatever reason I was able to survive. I’m not one to be defeated by this crap. For reasons that I don’t test or question, I’m relatively ok considering what I’ve been through. It’s confusing, but amazing, how some people can pull through this stuff and some can’t. Both have considerable damage after the fact, but both don’t pay it forward. Maybe it’s as simple as nature stepping in to end the cycle. Maybe the mind is so complex and it can’t be pinpointed yet as to why some do, and some don’t.

I have something in common with you. We had a brief discussion about our parents not being blood, and how that may have played a part in not becoming enmeshed with our parents. Damaged? Yes. Enmeshed? Never felt that way. You?