Abuse Inventory: Remembering (Survivors' Guide step #2)

[GeekyGirl]

I have determined that I was physically, sexually or emotionally abused as a child.

SURVIVORS GUIDE

REMEMBERING [Step 2]: Step two asks you to determine and then acknowledge to yourself that you were abused as a child and that the effects of the abuse may be causing some of your difficulties as an adult. Many of you who are in the process of recalling memories of your past may not yet have objective evidence of the abuse, and you may never find outside validation or corroboration of what happened. Instead, your evidence may be more intuitive. Even in the absence of "hard evidence," these intuitive feelings are significant and should not be dismissed.

If you can, please do the inventory survey and then share a brief summary of the three most egregious abuse events in your life. This may be very hard to do, don't disclose more detail than you are comfortable with.     The objective here is to get the abuse in front of us to see it, start to characterize and label it and start the process of understanding it an how to deal with the aftermath.  This is a time to remove the clutter of many years and many frustrations and to get to what damaged/hurt us the most.

There is a wide range of abuse categorized in the survey - from constant sexual abuse all the way to sporatic emotional abuse. It's all damaging - but damaging in different ways and with different ways to deal with it. The reason to catalog it is to see it for what it is - no more  - no less.  To take the consuming and sometimes murky feelings of abuse we have and actually paint a tangible target to start working with.  In time we will want to recast the 3 events as we remember more, talk more, but this is a start.

Here is some reference material: https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=189733.0




DEFINITIONS

Emotional abuse, more than physical or sexual abuse, must be measured in terms of severity:

mild when the acts are isolated incidents;

moderate when the pattern is more established and generalized; and

severe when acts are frequent, absolute and without exception.

All parents are emotionally abusive to their children at certain times. Parents are not perfect, and they too are subject to stresses and strains of daily living that may cause them to lash out at others. It is especially important to determine whether there is an established pattern of verbal abuse or mental cruelty in order to label the behavior emotional abuse.  Emotional abuse is the least understood, and perhaps the most controversial of the three types of abuse because of the confusion about how to define and describe it. It was psychologist James Garbarino who defined emotional abuse in terms of the five behavioral clusters described below.

Corrupting: Corrupting involves encouraging the child to engage in antisocial behavior that reinforces deviant social attitudes. Most frequently the corruption has to do with suggesting inappropriate ways of handling aggression, sexuality or substance abuse. Some examples of corrupting behavior include reinforcing the child for sexual behavior; condoning drug use; rewarding aggressive behavior; exposing the child to pornography; and involving the child in criminal activities such as prostitution, drug dealing or insurance fraud. Another example is parents who force their racist or exclusionary attitudes on their children and encourage them to act on these beliefs in ways that cause problems for them with peers, at school and even with the law.

Terrorizing:  Terrorizing includes verbally assaulting, bullying or frightening the child, thereby creating a climate of fear that the child generalizes to the world at large. Terrorizing usually involves threatening the child with some kind of extreme punishment or dire outcome, one that is clearly beyond the child's ability to respond or protect him/herself. Examples of terrorizing vary according to the child's age. During infancy, the parent may deliberately violate the child's tolerance for change or intense stimuli by teasing, scaring or engaging in unpredictable behavior. As the child grows older, the terrorizing may take the form of verbal intimidation: forcing the child to make unreasonable decisions (such as choosing between competing parents), constant raging at the child or threatening to expose or humiliate the child in public. In families that practice strict religions (fundamentalist and other sects), children can be terrorized by parents who "put the fear of God" in them or threaten them with the devil's wrath, should they not behave.

Isolating: Isolating involves the adults' cutting the child off from normal social experiences, thereby preventing the child from forming friendships and reinforcing the child's belief that s/he is alone in the world. Specific behaviors that tend to result in isolation are preventing children from seeing family or friends, preventing receipt of appropriate medical care, punishing the child's social overtures, rewarding the child for avoiding social situations, prohibiting the child from inviting other children home, withdrawing the child from school and preventing the child from joining clubs or dating. Because children tend to become more socially active as they get older, it is far easier to seclude a young child than an older one.

Rejecting involves the adult's refusal to acknowledge the child's worth and the legitimacy of the child's needs.   Children experience rejection and abandonment when parents act in ways that minimize the child's importance or value. During infancy, this may involve not returning the infant's smiles or misinterpreting crying as manipulation. In later years, it may include refusing to hug the child, placing the child away from the family, "scapegoating" the child for family problems and subjecting the child to verbal humiliation and excessive criticism. The child begins to think, "If my parents don't think I matter, then I must not be very worthwhile. If I'm not very worthwhile, maybe they will abandon me."



Ignoring:  Ignoring entails depriving the child of essential stimulation and responsiveness, thereby stifling emotional growth and intellectual development. Ignoring refers to the condition in which, due to excessive preoccupation with their own issues, the parents are emotionally unavailable to the child. In contrast to rejecting, which is actively abusive, ignoring is passive and neglectful. Ignoring behaviors include not responding to the child's talk, not recognizing the child's developing abilities, leaving the child without appropriate adult supervision, not protecting the child from physical or emotional assault by siblings or friends, not showing interest in the child's school progress and focusing on other relationships (such as a new lover) to the point that the child feels displaced. Emotional neglect may be the most common type of abuse, but it may also be the least reported.

[DreamGirl]

I'll start the ball rolling.

My sexual abuse was ongoing from the age of 7 until I was 12. He was my dad's friend (20 years my senior) and a flight attendant - he stayed with us as he passed thru our city. Most vivid memory is the first time it happened (I'll spare the details - but yay for EMDR to be able to type those words without crying) along with standing at his wedding holding his hand, I even remember that I wore a white dress with black polka dots. Most difficult part for me now to reconcile is that my dominating emotion was, of all things, jealousy.

My dad left me pretty vulnerable to this type of man, I had no sense of physical boundaries and I ate up his attention with a knife and fork.

That being said, my father at one point or another has been guilty of contributing to any of the categories of emotional abuse. The three that stand out for me:


Terrorizing: (mild) He was extremely short-tempered and would yell at the top of his lungs, in your face,  especially if you didn't agree with him. He just couldn't bear any challenge to his thinking or to actually be wrong. He would also lecture me for hours, almost like you see in police interrogations on TV, to get me to give up and say "you're right". I used to agree just to be free of the lecture. This dissipated as I got older however. I was extremely rebellious in my teenaged years and would just leave.  

Isolating: (mild) I became severely depressed at 13 - I asked for help (a counselor) and he threw his wallet across the room and questioned as how I expected him to pay for it. A short time later, I tried to commit suicide, and was admitted to a pediatric pysch ward. They suspected sexual abuse and when they hinted it was my father or my brother - he immediately pulled me from the program. The audacity/insult of the accusation was more important then getting to the bottom of my manifested behavior. He also dismissed several teachers/counselors who flagged my abnormal behavior in elementary school. He just didn't have the skill set to see past himself enough to see that I was in need of help and that it wasn't a slight against him.

 

Rejectingsevere) My father was textbook narcisisstic. He just didn't quite know how to care about his children in a loving way. He also aligned your "worth" to your intelligence (balked at movies like Forrest Gump or where the hero was mentally challenged). He would minimize my accomplishments - i.e. when I won an award for a writing contest (got to meet the Mayor), he said my work was "remedial". It was hard for him to see us as helpless little creatures desperate for a father's approval. Even in his dying days, he'd rather be around those who highly validated him (friends awed at his high intelligence) then his daughter who didn't know how to do that. Neither of us could be who we wanted each other to be and it was a sad ending for me, not to be able to figure that out until after he died.



So anyways, Geeky Girl, I hope that's what you were asking for.  

[GeekyGirl]

Thanks, DreamGirl.   I know that this is tough stuff, and we've all been through some hard things. As we've discussed here before, remembering and dealing with the memories is part of the healing process.

My mother seemed like a charming, outgoing woman to much of the world, but behind closed doors, could be very manipulative. I didn't really understand until I was older, and I had no idea that it wasn't normal for a mother to give her child the silent treatment for days at a time. She was especially on edge when my father was traveling (which was often).

Rejecting: (mild) My mother often pitted me against my brother. He and I argued, as siblings do on occasion, and I remember her telling me flat-out, "You're ugly. You're stupid." Not a great message a 13 year old girl.

Rejecting: (severe) My mother dressed me like a boy for the first 4-5 years of my life. I remember being very angry at strangers when they mistook me for a boy, although with my blue outfits and bowl haircut (this was in the 70's), I probably did look like a boy. I rebelled when it was time for me to go to school, only agreeing to go if I could wear dresses and threw a temper tantrum in the barber shop. Interestingly I'm very girly now although I'm in a very male-dominated field.

Ignoring: (moderate) Ugh, the silent treatment is the worst. My mother would punish me by ignoring me for hours, or even days on occasion. I simply did not exist until I had apologized for whatever I'd done (a look, a tone, or any criticism). One time while my mother was giving me the silent treatment, she picked up a box of Cheez-Its (my favorite) and threw Cheez-Its all over the house, leaving them for me to clean up. I took pictures before I cleaned up, vowing that I would go away to college and not come back (I was 16-ish at the time).

[NicholeMarie]

I think for the most part I've had to be filled in on the abuse, the specifics that is.  I Just knew intuitively that things weren't right.  I also like many told myself/ was told by the abuser that it was nothing and to let it go or it wasn't that bad.  I think the conflict in my head between "is it abuse?" and being told that its not and tuning it on me, just erased my memory for the most part.  I know that now, regardless of my memory that it wasn't ok and that I am still dealing with the repercussions of having to fix myself/get rid of the fleas.  

Terrorizing (severe: My mom would constantly scare  me out of doing something she didn't want me to do by telling me that something crazy would happen.  Of course I was never allowed out so I didn't know to believe otherwise.  I mean I didn't know that my mom did this until I was out of the house at 18.  Put me down all the time.  I never felt like I was capable of much.  I started to drop off in school.  She would get angry with me at the drop of a hat.  Hell, the hat didn't even have to drop.  My T says this is a valid source of my anxiety.  Any friends that did come over "loved" my mom.  She's so nice!    She would then make fun of me in front of them and then pick on me for not being able to take a joke when I got upset.  

Isolating:  I was NOT grounded for about 4-8 weeks before the age of 18.  Im not exaggerating.  One time she grounded me for months (2-3 I don't remember... .) because I was 5 minutes late coming home.  And the poor guy to drive me home, I told to leave when we got to the house and he couldn't figure out why I was so freaked out by him taking the wrong turn on the way home, making us late.  "its only 5 minutes" he said.  .  Anything she could use to punish me to get me to stay home.  

Rejecting: the only thing I can think of in this category is the scapegoating.  I was the center of my family's problems.  Actually now that Im thinking of it, Im reminded that on several occasions she blamed me for our family's dysfunction.  One time, I was even the reason she had kidney problems and the reason for some of the other various illnesses that sent her to the doctor.     I was the reason she was so miserable.   If she was happy with me she told me that she told ppl at work she was proud of me and if she WASN'T happy with me, she told me that she told ppl how "awful" I was.  To the point where one of her friends thought it ok to come to my room and tell me how much I hurt my mother and how I really should treat her better.     I wasn't allowed to be hurt by my mom's actions, I wasn't allowed to get mad at my mom.  Basically my feelings didn't matter.  They weren't acknowledged.  

Im sorry that we all had to go through this.  Im just really glad to not be under her roof anymore.  Im glad that I finally found a man that loves me and treats me well.  Im pretty happy with my life given the circumstances.  I just wish that I could be around my mom without feeling unbelievably uncomfortable.

[Auslaunder]

I was sexually abused by my eldest brother at ages 4-5. I can't remember before that. I feel ashamed about it still so it's difficult to admit.

I was physically abused by my father, though not severely.  My eldest brother was the scapegoat and he got the majority of it growing up. My brother would laugh at him when he'd hit him so my father would get angrier. He would run away from home and I remember my father binding his hands and feet like a prisoner with duck tape.

I was emotionally abused by my father. The terrorizing is what I remember most. His rage fits were scary. He would wake me up late at night to scream at me and make me apologize again and again because I wasn't doing it right for days in a row.

He also used isolation a lot. He didn't like for me to have friends and tried to monopolize my time so I would be too busy to see my friends or he would make up excuses for why my friend or boyfriend was inappropriate when they were excellent company, good students with good behavior.

He used rejection. He never told me he loved me until I was in college and his girlfriend insisted, because he claimed in "good old days" father's didn't do that. I can remember him trying to hug me at about age 4 and me refusing because I felt revulsion at him touching me. I'm not sure where that came from but I think I must have already felt rejected.

[oceaneyes]

Like some of the other commenters here said, I always knew something was wrong and felt that I needed to escape my dysfunctional family but it wasn't until I entered therapy that I learned the true extent of the abuse I experienced. I feel like I've recovered pretty well but I still have moments when I find myself grieving my lost childhood and wondering how I might have turned out if I had been nurtured as a child.

Terrorizing: (severe) My alcoholic stepfather was very verbally abusive. At least once a week, he would get very very drunk and scream at me about nothing at all. He usually would criticize me for how much time I spent on the internet, or make mean comments about my appearance. He would get right in my face and scream until spit was coming out of his mouth. A few times he got physical with me throwing things or shoving me. One time I got the guts to call my grandpa during one of my stepfather's outbursts. When he discovered me on the phone he screamed at me that I was ruining the family and just generally spewed on about how terrible I was before throwing all the phones in the house out into the lake.

Rejecting: (mild) I was always criticized by my parents and stepfather for my appearance and for being "lazy." Anytime I cried I was immediately called a cry baby and told to stop. It happened so much that I found myself unable to cry at my grandparents' funerals, which subsequently made me feel like a monster. My mother liked to tell me how much I looked like my dad, in a negative way. She picked on me for being tall and having a big nose like my dad. When you're compared to a person that your mother says is a horrible human being, you start to feel like you're also a horrible human being.

Ignoring: (moderate) My parents were never interested in my school work or achievements. My only real motivation for doing well in school was to get out of my dysfunctional home. I participated in marching band in high school which kept me out of my home for a considerable amount of time. My parents never voluntarily came to see me perform. I always had to beg my mom to come see me play and she would only come to home games. My father never saw me perform. I even brought him a VHS tape of one of my performances and he couldn't be bothered. That's just one example but in general I always had the impression that the adults were far too busy to be bothered with me. I kept to myself most of the time, never asked for help with homework or any school projects. The smaller and quieter I could make myself, the better. To this day I have a hard time being recognized for my achievements, I try to downplay them and avoid the spotlight like crazy because I feel unworthy of praise.