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Originally Posted by WeepingWillow23
Unsurprisingly T and I have been talking about my childhood  I had a perfectly normal childhood (no abuse/neglect whatsoever) until 13+ years old, except for some bullying at school and my beloved Nan dying. Now I can understand why someone with a horrible, abusive childhood would block out childhood memories, even good ones, but I can't understand why I have so few memories from before I was a teenager. I remember 1 happy birthday party, being with my Nan, playing with my brother, and spending lots of time on my own reading or using my imagination. Apart from the one birthday party, none of my memories include my parents 
So I guess my question is for those who had happy childhoods, how much do you remember? Is it weird that I remember so little? |
I can't speak much to memories or lack thereof -- I guess I'm not sure what it means or what is normal. But I do SO relate to this in many ways. It reminds me of a session where I was sitting and crying and telling T that I did not deserve his help, and he asked me why, and I said, "Because nothing bad ever happened to me."
His response was something like: "You and I both know people who have suffered through much more traumatic things as children. But that doesn't mean that what happened to you wasn't bad. It doesn't mean that to have something more subtle going on in your home shouldn't affect you deeply."
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Another thing I've been thinking about since my last session, which I also plan to bring up with T, is about keeping secrets as a child. Do you think some children are more private than others? Otherwise how do they learn to keep secrets without learning from their family? What I'm mainly referring to is being suicidal at 8 years old after my Nan died, but telling no-one. How does an 8-year-old know that suicide is a taboo topic and should be hidden from everyone? My family had NO IDEA! I stopped eating much for at least a year after my Nan died, which a psychologist said was due to feeling out of control because my Nan died. My parents thought it was because I got 'carried away' with learning about healthy eating in school. They had no idea that I tried to kill myself, or that when that attempt failed I felt that I deserved a slower, more painful death and so tried to starve myself to death.
I'm wondering how good parents can not notice that I was in that much pain, unless I was so good at hiding it? And if I was, how did I learn that? How did I know that I wasn't 'supposed' to talk about feeling so bad?
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And oh my goodness how I can relate to this. I think some kids are more private than others, and I know that I was INTENSELY private. I kept things secret almost compulsively. I had this problem of hiding stuff for a really long time, well into college and even now I fight it. Often for no rational reason, I hide physical objects.
I also had suicidal thoughts as a child, not triggered by any specific event (I think depression has a pretty strong physiological and possibly genetic component for me), but they were there. I, too, knew to keep those secret. What I'm putting together now in therapy is that that probably had a lot to do with the fact that my family had secrets, and were seriously not dealing with a fair amount of *****. I think that perceptive children pick up on the fact that there are secrets, and can extrapolate then to start keeping secrets themselves as it is modeled as the appropriate thing to do.
I used to beat myself up about how secretive I was back then, in part because I thought, "If I had just told my parents what was going on, maybe they really would have believed me [although this was also a problem] and would have taken me to a therapist." But I see it differently now that a couple of things have happened recently:
1. I saw my preschool report card. I was always an overachiever and this was reflected in much of the card (I knew ALL of my colors and shapes!) but there was one section where I FAILED. Miserably. That section was entitled, "Social and Emotional". It stood out really strongly because I only had the highest "marks" on every single other section, and only average to low "marks" in this one. It was like, really mom and dad? No red flags? I began to realize that there were warning signs before I even got to kindergarten that were selectively (although not maliciously, I fully believe my parents wanted me to be ok) ignored.
2. I learned a really disgustingly big family secret. I am still overwhelmed by it, still incredulous about how it has been handled (or more accurately, not handled) and the risks at which my own parents placed me that I had no awareness of. But you know -- I probably DID have some awareness, but my child mind filled it in in a way that did not jibe with reality, because I had no way of knowing the truth.
I too wonder how my parents could not have known there was a problem. There were lots of signs -- and even my teachers picked up on some of them. But I was always a good student, and I think the idea was that everything must be ok if I can handle my academics so well. I think my parents saw emotional problems as the one thing I was just not working as hard on. Or I was "just shy" or "just sensitive".
And you have to figure that family secrets lead to a fair amount of denial. I think my parents thought that because they were "protecting" me from the abuse and neglect present in their own childhoods, that I must be ok. Meanwhile, their unresolved issues just trickled down in indirect ways. There was a certain amount of, "Well I'm not neglecting you like MY mother did, so what's the problem? You must just be really sensitive/spoiled."
Do you think maybe there are some family issues and secrets that you might have sensed that would have caused you to withdraw? Can you think of something about your parents that might have contributed to their blindness regarding your not eating?
OK now this is insanely long, but I could just relate to what you said SO much. I know for me the secrets and the unresolved parental issues -- they wanted so much to keep me from what they dealt with, they didn't even entertain the idea that other problems might arise -- had a LOT to do with my extremely private nature. I wonder if something like it is at play for you too.