Yuck. Training at work triggering.

[Our abuse recovery guide]

So I work for a college which has to follow all manner of rules and regulations for protecting students and employees.  As part of my job, I like to take all the training I have to require of other people, and so when one group we are working with is told they need Child Protection Training through an online course, I figured I'd take it, too, so I can be informed of how long it takes and what it entails. 

Yuck.  Usually, when I read things about Human Protections, it's about keeping identifiable data secure and making sure survey are administered in the way approved by NIH. 

This is about recognizing child abuse as an outsider, as a teacher or professor working with the kids.  As an abused kid, I'm having a hard time with it.  Emotional Abuse? Check.  Physical?  Check. Neglect? Check (this actually just verified that my dad's refusals and reprimands about taking me to a doctor when I was sick were, yes, neglect.) Sexual?  Check.  I've read on bpdfamily about covert sexual abuse and emotional incest, and yes... .     

And it won't let me skip to the end and answer the dumb questions I know all too well. 

Sorry - never really shared the extent of what went on - I was never directly touched, but they exposed me to pornography while under the age of 10 that I can remember, perhaps even as young as 6.  They had no filter about their behavior, both parents were BPD or AntiSsocial Personality Disorder, and so I knew when they were having sex, they'd joke with me about it, Mom would share her fears about Dad having affairs and his trips to strip clubs, how well he was supposedly endowed and we'd even play a family game of "count the hookers" when driving through the city.  I did not put two and two together about why ladies were in their underwear outside on sidewalks in the winter, I was worried they were cold.  He would leave his playboys all over, rent "best chest" contest videos and we'd watch them together.  I was a child and thought I was being given a treat for not being shooed out of the room.   Mom told me about the birds and the bees and masturbation when I was 5.  5.  like, Kindergarten.  She claimed it was so I'd not let a pedophile touch me, and was obsessed with the fear of me being raped, and later accused me of being sexually active when I was 14 (I did not even date till college, and was a virgin for 2.5 years into my first r/s).  I was never out alone, and yet she was convinced I was spending my school hours sleeping around and dragged me off to the GYNO all the time to have me looked at from age 11.   And to make things worse, I know I tried to share my "knowledge" with the few friends I was allowed to have, encouraging stripping at times and such.  So I was like some child sexual predator myself I guess.            

The beatings stopped when I think the bruises were noticed.  The neglect I guess made me ready to live on my own and be a grown up really early compared to my peers, so while it sucks, and my internal guide for what kids can do at what age is all wrong, I guess the hurt was more emotional.  The emotional abuse is why I am NC.  And the sexual just makes me feel sick.  I've been on here, and I see people who were raped by family, and I have a friend who was by her stepfather night after night, and I'm like what am I upset about?  That didn't happen to me, so I was not sexually abused.  But then I read the definitions on here and on this training, and how all adults seem to have failed me, and I want to cry, and throw up.

[isilme]

So I work for a college which has to follow all manner of rules and regulations for protecting students and employees.  As part of my job, I like to take all the training I have to require of other people, and so when one group we are working with is told they need Child Protection Training through an online course, I figured I'd take it, too, so I can be informed of how long it takes and what it entails. 

Yuck.  Usually, when I read things about Human Protections, it's about keeping identifiable data secure and making sure survey are administered in the way approved by NIH. 

This is about recognizing child abuse as an outsider, as a teacher or professor working with the kids.  As an abused kid, I'm having a hard time with it.  Emotional Abuse? Check.  Physical?  Check. Neglect? Check (this actually just verified that my dad's refusals and reprimands about taking me to a doctor when I was sick were, yes, neglect.) Sexual?  Check.  I've read on bpdfamily about covert sexual abuse and emotional incest, and yes... .     

And it won't let me skip to the end and answer the dumb questions I know all too well. 

Sorry - never really shared the extent of what went on - I was never directly touched, but they exposed me to pornography while under the age of 10 that I can remember, perhaps even as young as 6.  They had no filter about their behavior, both parents were BPD or AntiSsocial Personality Disorder, and so I knew when they were having sex, they'd joke with me about it, Mom would share her fears about Dad having affairs and his trips to strip clubs, how well he was supposedly endowed and we'd even play a family game of "count the hookers" when driving through the city.  I did not put two and two together about why ladies were in their underwear outside on sidewalks in the winter, I was worried they were cold.  He would leave his playboys all over, rent "best chest" contest videos and we'd watch them together.  I was a child and thought I was being given a treat for not being shooed out of the room.   Mom told me about the birds and the bees and masturbation when I was 5.  5.  like, Kindergarten.  She claimed it was so I'd not let a pedophile touch me, and was obsessed with the fear of me being raped, and later accused me of being sexually active when I was 14 (I did not even date till college, and was a virgin for 2.5 years into my first r/s).  I was never out alone, and yet she was convinced I was spending my school hours sleeping around and dragged me off to the GYNO all the time to have me looked at from age 11.   And to make things worse, I know I tried to share my "knowledge" with the few friends I was allowed to have, encouraging stripping at times and such.  So I was like some child sexual predator myself I guess.            

The beatings stopped when I think the bruises were noticed.  The neglect I guess made me ready to live on my own and be a grown up really early compared to my peers, so while it sucks, and my internal guide for what kids can do at what age is all wrong, I guess the hurt was more emotional.  The emotional abuse is why I am NC.  And the sexual just makes me feel sick.  I've been on here, and I see people who were raped by family, and I have a friend who was by her stepfather night after night, and I'm like what am I upset about?  That didn't happen to me, so I was not sexually abused.  But then I read the definitions on here and on this training, and how all adults seem to have failed me, and I want to cry, and throw up.

[Naughty Nibbler]

I'm so sorry about the class triggering all those horrible memories.  When we are young, we aren't aware that our normal isn't normal.  It must have been very confusing to receive mixed messages.  On one hand, you were exposed to a lot of inappropriate sexual media and situations, then your mom seemed to take excessive actions to send a message for you to avoid sexual involvement.

Mom told me about the birds and the bees and masturbation when I was 5.  5.  like, Kindergarten.  She claimed it was so I'd not let a pedophile touch me, and was obsessed with the fear of me being raped, and later accused me of being sexually active when I was 14 (I did not even date till college, and was a virgin for 2.5 years into my first r/s).  I was never out alone, and yet she was convinced I was spending my school hours sleeping around and dragged me off to the GYNO all the time to have me looked at from age 11.   And to make things worse, I know I tried to share my "knowledge" with the few friends I was allowed to have, encouraging stripping at times and such.  So I was like some child sexual predator myself I guess.

Somehow, you defied the odds and held off on starting sexual activity.  Do you think the overexposure had a reverse effect on you?  Children "stripping" can be considered just normal childhood curiosity at certain ages (i.e. playing doctor)

Do you know if your mom was ever molested?  Could she have been promiscuous when she was young?  Were either of your parents medicated for their conditions, or received therapy?

Have you previously discussed these issues in therapy?  If you have some lingering distress from the triggering, it might be helpful to talk to a therapist. 

[Harri]

Hi Isilme.  It must be tough to read triggering things while at work.  

Sharing what you shared here is important.  Putting the experience into words can be healing, so kudos to you for taking a triggering experience and coming here to write about it.

I recently had a conversation with my T about the mother daughter sexual abuse (mdsa) I experienced.  I was (and still am) conflicted because my mother pleasured me.  There is still a part in my mind that thinks because I enjoyed it sometimes that it was not abuse and that I am in some way flawed.  I am not mentioning that to take over your thread or to try to compare experiences, but to let you know that I think it is fairly common to always compare to someone else's 'worse' experience and limit our own.  For me, it is denial.  I don't have to accept how bad things were and how much it has effected me.  :)oes any of that seem to fit for you?

The thing is, there is always someone with a worse story, who had more horrible experiences.  always.  Again, why does that limit our own experiences?  If a child or student came to you and told you the details you shared here, would you think their experience was no big deal?  In my opinion, your experiences were very damaging and hurtful and yes, you were grossly sexually abused.  Exposing a child to pornography and all the sexual talk you experienced is actually on the list of sexually abusive behaviors.  

I was talking with a friend recently and said that I think people have to pick their own label (as in sexual abuse vs inappropriate or sexualized behaviors), but there is a caveat.  If that label is not determined by facts but rather chosen from a point of view that was formed in an abusive, violating and invalidating environment, there may be a problem.  So many of the behaviors we talk about here have been going on for generations, shaping our experiences, thoughts, beliefs.  

I was also reading about mdsa recently and learned that having thoughts that echo our experiences or acting the way you did as a kid with other kids, is common and not surprising.  I won't call it normal though as I am not a professional or anything.  But there were certain things that would come to mind randomly that I found very disturbing and unsettling.  It makes sense that my mind would go there.  I know the dangers, the things that can happen so I have/had alarm bells going off but I was not recognizing them as alarms, I was thinking there was something evil in me.

Anyway, i am rambling now.  I just wanted to let you know I am sorry you are having a tough time with this and let you know that I get it.

[isilme]

Naught Nibbler and Harri,

Thanks.  I guess I just still feel a lot of shame about it.  I have for a long time been "factually aware" of childhood events, but I have for so long needed to shut off the feelings associated with them to where many things I remember are like watching a movie about someone else.  It was a survival mechanism, and I think over the last decade my brain is trying to tell me it's time to try to review these things.  I have not shared with H, even, this kind of stuff.  He knows about the neglect, psychological and physical abuse, but this kinda of stuff, I am too embarrassed.  I think it's just hard when my disassociative walls break down and I have to feel the feelings.  I've spent a long time behind those walls, and found this site when I had to admit I actually was feeling anger and rage about how I was treated growing up, and needed a place like this to validate that those feelings were okay.  I guess disassociation from the emotions is also a form of denial - like, "sure, it happened, but I'm totally okay, nothing to se here."

Was my mom abused herself?
I am uncertain about my mom and the possibility of abuse - I never met her mother, but from what I've learned about her, she was also unstable and probably not a good role model for my mom.  I know my mom got pregnant out of wedlock at 19, had my half brother and gave him up for adoption, but the story changed a lot about whether it was a consensual encounter.  One of the more disturbing cases of my not being able to tell if she was being truthful was when I was in my mid-20s, we'd been NC for a while, LC for a while, and then were having regular phone calls.  She got in trouble a lot with bad credit, and pretty much theft by check.  She was trying to buy a trailer and then somehow the story became that she was raped, forced into an oral sex encounter, but nothing stayed the same from each telling, she wouldn't go to the police, a hospital, it happened last week at one telling, months ago in another, and I lived over 3 hours away and had such limited funds I could not go check on her.  I think overall I felt it was some sort of story to get me to FOG myself back to her side (I was her parentified caretaker).  Mom wanted a BFF, not a daughter, I think, and thought of me as her little clone, so talking about anything under the sun seemed okay to her.  She will never forgive me for not giving up my life I have built since I was 15 and moving back in with her to take care of her full time.  

Did oversaturation make me reluctant as a teen /  adult?
I guess my attempts to engage my peers in games of stripping and kissing as a child and pre-teen  might be part of why I was so slow finding anything real as far as a relationship.  And honestly, while I was very adult and independent as far as day to day taking care of myself, I was very stunted as far as socially interacting with my teenage and young adult companions.  I had to observe a LOT to understand what was okay, and what was not just in normal conversations.  I was also shamed about my looks as a id by my parents and my grandparenst and classmates, and not very good at "girl things" like hair and makeup, hid under baggy clothes, and I always seemed to be a tomboy, never felt I made anyone see me as a girl/woman.  I asked a guy to prom, got rejected, cried a lot, spent much of high school with  a crush on a boy in my class  that now I think was a safety screen for me.  As long as I had a crush on him, and he was unobtainable, I was asserting my heteronormative nature while also safe from having to actually interact with him.  

I also found that for the most part I really liked one of the church groups I attended in high school, and that also influenced me away from any activity, and the shame I saw in my friends who were sexually active.  Once I got to college, I was a lot better socially developed and more ready to return an interest once interest was shown in me, but I was still a slow mover, wanting to make sure I didn't end up crying like I'd seen my friends do, regretting how far they'd gone.  And actually, H is my first and only lover, and even with his own BPD issues he did not force, pressure me, and allowed me to move at my pace.  

I think the online training was just bad to read - it is written of course mostly for people who never lived any of it, and had I been able to just skip ahead to take the quizzes and be done with it, it would have been tolerable.  Instead, it forced me to wait for screen after screen to load, and I'm like "yeah, I kinda know this, can I move on, now?"

[Turkish]

A lot of what they did was inappropriate at best.  Exposing you to pornography was illegal, criminal.  Maybe it was a fact your mom was abused. This provides an explanation,  but it doesn't change the fact that they damaged and stole your innocence in so many ways.  Acknowledging it is the first step,  and it's maybe the hardest one. 

[Naughty Nibbler]

Thanks.  I guess I just still feel a lot of shame about it.  I have for a long time been "factually aware" of childhood events, but I have for so long needed to shut off the feelings associated with them to where many things I remember are like watching a movie about someone else.  It was a survival mechanism, and I think over the last decade my brain is trying to tell me it's time to try to review these things.  I have not shared with H, even, this kind of stuff.  He knows about the neglect, psychological and physical abuse, but this kinda of stuff, I am too embarrassed.  I think it's just hard when my disassociative walls break down and I have to feel the feelings.  I've spent a long time behind those walls, and found this site when I had to admit I actually was feeling anger and rage about how I was treated growing up, and needed a place like this to validate that those feelings were okay.  I guess disassociation from the emotions is also a form of denial - like, "sure, it happened, but I'm totally okay, nothing to se here.

isilme:

Just wondering if you might have something to resolve in regard to your mention of "shame"?  I'm thinking you may have shame for things that weren't your fault.  Perhaps it could be beneficial to forgive yourself and perhaps write a forgiveness letter to yourself.

I found this article on "shame versus guilt".  I hadn't really thought about the difference between the two.  You might find the comparison interesting.

www.gydoindy.com/7-differences-between-shame-and-guilt/

[Woolspinner2000]

Isilme,

I too have taken those tests before when I was working with kids. I understood that they were to help me as well as to help recognize the signs of abuse, no matter the form. I think the last time I took one, I wasn't as far into T as I am now. I can definitely relate to how they can be very triggering! I am so sorry that it brought up a lot of painful thoughts, and thank you for being open and sharing with us. That took a lot of courage, and as Turkish noted, that first step may be the hardest.

It can be hard to read, but the truth is that this definitely was abuse, that you were exposed to such things when you were too innocent to know anything else. You trusted your parents, like most of us did, not understanding that they were disordered and inappropriate. Have you reviewed the Survivors Guide to the right lately? Off and on I take time to review the steps (and they are not necessarily linear). Do you feel that you are at another one of those points that may cause you to say, ":)arn it! Not another thing to have to work through."

Keep going! It takes a brave person to face these hurts. And you are braver than you know, right now. Two hugs for you!   

 
Wools

[isilme]

Woolspinner,

Thanks, no I have not gone back into the Survivors Guide in a while.  I think I am just surprised and finding that the abuse was far more than the brutal beatings that left bruises or the nasty emotional abuse - those are pretty easy to identify.  Part of what brought me to this site was a realization of the fact that the biggest day to day issue that really hurt at its realization was the neglect, and now I am realizing these behaviors were far more inappropriate that I'd even realized.  They were just totally unsuited for being parents, and aren't actually that good at consistent adulting.  I don't feel the rage I felt a few years ago as I realized watching my friends with their children just how weird and sad things were for me, but I do feel kinda ill and ashamed when I think about the content from the training. 

Overall, the sum total of their inability to parent seems to have been summed up in the fact they had NO clue about what was age-appropriate, from entertainment to chores.  I was cooking at 7, given my first alarm clock by 5 to get up on my own for school.  It had Micky Mouse on it, and was a clock radio and I remember thinking "How cool!"  And by age 8, I needed nor wanted any assistance getting up, dressed, and out the door to school.  By 14, I could go entire days without encountering one of them - mom as always asleep on her pills, and at that time dad was working 2 jobs.  I lived off pizza, popcorn, Pepsi and pop tarts, because it never occurred to me you could cook for just one person.  Either the meal was for the family, or you made a sandwich, and I hated sandwiches for dinner.  I think a lot of the beatings when I was younger was due to their frustration that a 3 year old could not or would not do certain things as they thought I should be able to, like cleaning my room, getting dressed fast enough, I can't even remember what half of them were for, to be honest. 

I know 8-year-olds now.  I would not have them standing on a step stool browning ground beef, scrambling eggs, or cooking bacon.  And I would certainly never talk to them about grown up acts or show them Playboys, even as a joke.  If I had a daughter, I'd want to let her know that by about age 11-16 she should expect her first period so she would not be scared.  I was 11, and I did not even go tell my mom.  I found the supplies I needed, used them, and I think either told her after it happened for a few months, or she saw pads in the trash. 

I guess it's just one more thing to process. 

[Woolspinner2000]

Islime,

You are processing a lot of things. When the floodgates start to open, it can be like a dam breaking loose. Do you have a T that is available to help you work through these tough things?

I can relate to many of the things that you experienced, and to have parents who were so much in need that we had to be the parents of them is a very sad state of affairs. It's pretty sad when one can look back and see how much of our lives were so drastically affected by the dysfunctional choices they made. We were only kids. Here is a quote from Step 5 of the Remembering stage on the side:

You can challenge those words of your parents/abusers that continue to echo in your mind by coming to understand your dysfunctional family and recognizing the real reasons why you were abused. This is an essential step in recovery because, without seeing that your parents/abusers were at fault, you will have difficulty in facing the remaining tasks of recovery: directing your anger away from yourself and towards them, uncovering your shame and understanding how the abuse affects your life today.

Have you been able to challenge any of these thoughts so far or are you still in the process of remembering?

 
Wools

[isilme]

I have been both remembering and challenging for years.  I don't this is a process that actually ever has an "end", but that each new realization will be a new "step one".  Maybe that step one is higher up the ladder, and starts in a stronger place than the original step one, but it's like an outline of my life, where the Roman Number I, II, II are the revelations, and each one has its own set of memories and then accompanying feelings, and then steps for healing from all of the above. 

I.  I've known since childhood that the beatings were obviously wrong.  I was even taught to hide them and lie about bruises if my clothes slipped during PE at school and the ones on my legs or arms showed.  So that was easy to identify and easy to talk about. 

II.  The emotional abuse took longer to realize was not normal and not deserved, but I knew that things like talking your parents out of suicide was not something my peers had to do.  I picked up on the wrongness about that kind of stuff from plenty of media about it, and books like "A Little Princess."  Sara Crew helped me understand that I did not deserve that kind of treatment and id a good job illustrating how wrong the antagonist's actions were. 

III.  The neglect took even longer to even understand it was neglect.  I had food, and a roof (even when we were homeless, nice people kept us housed and fed out of kindness).  I had clothes, often decent ones, sometimes second hand from thrift stores and donations.  But I also had a broken window in my bedroom that let in cold winter air int eh north east (it would not close fully), and it never occurred to me to tell the adults in the house about it.  I had bed springs coming through my mattress, and so I padded it myself with blankets layered under me, because I'd learned that asking for help was dicey and unpredictable, and often it was best to fix things myself.  I was capable at a very young age of getting myself up, dressed, sort of fed, and off to school, and coming home, and as I grew older, cooking dinner, all my own laundry, all before I was in junior high.  All of this seemed normal to me.  I did not understand meeting college students in the dorms who never did their own laundry, woke up on their own for school, or shopped for their own groceries.  By college, I'd been doing many of these things for over a decade.  It took seeing friends' children and how they took care of them to realize I was little better noticed than the housecat. 

There were a few instances of memory coming back about things like a school picture day that had me in tears in the girls' room because mom forgot about it, then remembered somehow as I was walking out the door for school.  She took offense to what I was wearing that day, and tossed a dress out of my closet at me and told me to wear it in the photos.  But, I was in a cast.  I could not get the dress on as my cast was too big for the sleeves, and 8 year old me was panicking in the girls' room, afriad to make mom mad by being in the wrong clothes for picture day, until a nice teacher found me.  She cleaned me up, told me only my blouse was going to show anyway and that the shirt I had on was very nice and brushed my hair, and got me, well, not smiling, but presentable for the photos.  Now, it's actually one of my favorite photos, because I feel it's one of the most honest.  By the time the pics came in, mom had forgotten to be upset about the shirt I had on. 

IV.  Covert Sexual Abuse
This one is the one I am most recently having to admit.  So I guess it's just raw, and the acceptance that yes, in addition to the other forms of abuse, sexual abuse was also present even if there was never any physical contact.

I'm 39.  I've been NC with Dad since I was 19 an he kicked me out.  Mom was my responsibility growing up, and so while I was NC because Dad forced it when i was 15, I waffled in and out of contact in my 20s until it jsut ebcause clear I could not hlep her an I could not continue talking to her and feel so unable to help her.  I was so enmehsed I had a very hard time being in communication but hating hearing her talk about her probelms, knowing she caused many of them herself, and then hearing her pleas and demands that I give up my life of 15 years to move up to her state and take care of her forever.  So we've been pretty much totally NC at least 6 years.  So it feels so weird for things that happened to me over 25-30 years ago to be making me feel so bad to examine.  They are both in their 70s now. 

I don't feel responsible for their actions.  I know better.  I DO feel responsible for inappropriate behavior of my own, but DO realize that I was a child at the time.  Ugh.  I'm just tired of memories popping up, reminding me of people I have nothing to do with.