How I experience danger & vulnerability

[Depression = 72% of members]

Don't really know why but I feel like sharing this here. Yesterday I was at the T and I explained a feeling/memory I had when I was 6. My mom had just died and my father had gotten angry with my niece after I was playing with her. I remember feeling anxious, and very aware of danger. My niece was 'bad' and a threat from that moment on.

I described it as 'walking on ice naked with my skin stripped from my body'.

This exact feeling has led me to distrust people and made me build walls of 'perfection'.

22 years later I hear from my aunt what happened that day. I was playing mommy/daddy with her and I started crying, saying that I missed my mom. My dad got angry at my 7-year old niece (and aunt) and said that I wasn't acting like this before I was playing with my niece. It was the last vacation we were together, my father ended contact with them after. I looked her up (annoying my father) because I wanted to get in touch with feminin blood relatives. So glad I did.

Still working in breaking that wall of perfection and feeling generally safe with people.  

[ziniztar]

Don't really know why but I feel like sharing this here. Yesterday I was at the T and I explained a feeling/memory I had when I was 6. My mom had just died and my father had gotten angry with my niece after I was playing with her. I remember feeling anxious, and very aware of danger. My niece was 'bad' and a threat from that moment on.

I described it as 'walking on ice naked with my skin stripped from my body'.

This exact feeling has led me to distrust people and made me build walls of 'perfection'.

22 years later I hear from my aunt what happened that day. I was playing mommy/daddy with her and I started crying, saying that I missed my mom. My dad got angry at my 7-year old niece (and aunt) and said that I wasn't acting like this before I was playing with my niece. It was the last vacation we were together, my father ended contact with them after. I looked her up (annoying my father) because I wanted to get in touch with feminin blood relatives. So glad I did.

Still working in breaking that wall of perfection and feeling generally safe with people.  

[Grey Kitty]

I'm not clear on what the 6-year-old Zin felt and learned at the time... .

Did you feel that your niece was bad/dangerous?

Or did you learn that your dad was dangerous, and that you needed to be careful around him then?

Or something else?

Not knowing anything but this story about your dad, he obviously wasn't emotionally equipped to handle either your mom dying or your grieving process in a healthy way. Cutting contact over something like that... .ugh.

Have you asked your dad how he remembered the incident as an adult?