Quote:
Originally Posted by Asiablue
Here's the thing Yearning, even if that was all true (which i don't think it is) then that would have to mean you had severe problems underlying and children with happy secure home lives just don't make stuff like that up, they are too busy being happy and secure and playing in the yard. Happy kids don't need extra attention, happy kids who have happy parents who provide love and security don't need to go looking for it elsewhere or create fantasies.
So if you were making it all up... then there was still something going wrong, somewhere. But the fact is, you are not making it all up, things happened that shouldn't have. The proof is in your emotions not your memories. If you feel unhappy, unloved, insecure, terrified, abused etc etc then you were. Your feelings are your proof. And the reason you are denying it to yourself is because the people around you would rather it was your fault than look in the mirror and see whose fault it really is.
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My parents' divorce was traumatic enough to make me feel unloved, unhappy, and insecure, and having a younger brother with autism who needed much more supervision and attention than I did probably compounded that problem. So it could be that those were the things in my life that created all my anxiety.
And this makes sense. My anxiety got really serious when I was five, and I remember the event that caused it to skyrocket, which involved both of my parents forgetting whose day it was to pick me up from kindergarten, so I was sitting there for about half an hour before my teacher realized they weren't coming and asked me who to call; I didn't know so she called both of them. They came to my school and were yelling so loudly at each other in front of me and my teacher that the principal called the police. That is where my anxiety started, because of a high conflict divorce, not because of abuse.
It's just crazy-making to think that all these memories I have of things she said or did to me might not have ever happened or might have been blown out of proportion in my imagination. Anxiety because of my parents' divorce and creating fantasies because of a lack of attention stemming from that is not anywhere near as bad as anxiety because of abuse. And if the former is true but I went around telling people the latter because the narrative is just more pleasant that way...well, that's unforgivable.