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Old Mar 26, 2015, 10:26 PM
RedEagle RedEagle is offline
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Member Since: Apr 2012
Posts: 111
Quote:
Originally Posted by ochoa.c View Post
I feel that hitting a child is abusive from my experience with my grandmother. My dad? Yes, you can say he was abusive or not, as he hit me but he never did it in anger, or with whatever he had in his hands like a switch or a shoe and never caring where he hit, but more to keep consistency. He did it in a controlled manner, to make me feel hurt with my feelings, but not to leave bruises or just do it nilly-willy in any part of my body. I had two methods of corporeal punishment, and I don't believe that my grandmother was right in hitting us the way she did in retrospective and in the way she treated us.

No, she never just said things like that a couple of times and that was that. It was constant. In the 7 years I spent with her those are the phrases I remember most out of all she ever said to me and my siblings. I don't think a child who has a well adjusted or healthy parent remembers the negatives about their experience with them. I remember far more loving memories of my father even though he was strict and was present one or two months of the year during those years at home than I do of my grandmother.

Yes, a normal healthy parent will assist you in your development, I understand that from whatever little studies I have done and speaking with other parents. However, abuse doesn't just manifest itself into dependency. I learned through revisiting those years that it can also manifest itself into neglect or even rejection of a child. Like I said, looking back at it I realized nothing of what I had experienced back then was right because that's not what love is, that's not how you demonstrate to someone you love them. It sounds to me like signs of abuse or abusive behavior from my grandmother. Even if she didn't try to break me down systematically she engaged in abusive behaviors which, for whatever reason, ended up hurting me and my siblings. The fact she was a mean old woman doesn't mean that gives her any justification -- let alone rights -- to have told children that their mother was worthless in front of them who just got abandoned by their mother. To me, that's abusive, now that I look back at it. Regardless of whether she was a mean old woman or not.

Being a victim of abuse, I've learned, doesn't just involve they making you dependent upon them. It can take many forms, and many parents who abuse their children mean no harm in their actions. Yet they are abusive. The fact that they are not trying to make you dependent upon them and feel the abusive behaviors are done in your own self-interest doesn't precisely mean they are not abusive.

I just feel that way because I grew up being put into my head that I was privileged I even had a family and that my grandmother was just not right in her head and that I should forgive her and that life is life. However, I don't think that somehow that sounds right; and honestly is something I've been trying to change my perspective about to begin to understand what went wrong.

The fact is that abuse is not something we can point out and say "well THIS isn't abuse and THIS, this right here, is abusive behavior" as it can take many shapes and forms. Mine just took a more ambiguous shape than the norm.

I also don't feel I became particularly strong from the experience. If anything I feel I became more detached and more self-absorbed to prevent getting hurt from her words. I keep people at arm's length to not get hurt. That's not "healthy" development when you feel so insecure about others it cripples how open you can be to them or how much you can trust them. Being mature and strong implies to me different things than keeping people at arms' length and feel like you can't trust anyone, which is the behavior I most often take with new individuals and I more often than not test them to see if they won't hurt me.
Nothing wrong with keeping people at arm's length, or further if necessary. Once you've been stung bad it's only natural to develop methods to protect yourself. Keeping people at a safe distance is vital imo, unless you want to risk re-living traumatic experiences over and over again for your whole life.