shakesphere, I had a conversation recently with a guy that is part of a family owned business where I get my feed and hay for my horses/ponies. He ususally wears a baseball cap, but this one day he wasn't and I noticed he had big scars on his forehead. So, I asked him what happened to him. He told me that when he was younger he flipped his car and that resulted in him experiencing a major head trauma. He was in a coma for a few months and they did not think he would ever wake up.

I asked him if he could hear what was going on around him when he was in a coma, he said no, but instead he thought he was just living his life, going to school just living his life day by day. He did not know he was in the hospital, in a coma. So, it must be that because he sustained the injury to the front part of his head/brain, that his executive functioning part of his brain was compromised the most. That part of our brain is in the "now" and making our day to day decisions and a lot of who we are and how we operate is based on a schedule we keep in the subconscious mind. There are a lot of things we know how to do, and just do that become automatic. Our frontal lobe, executive part of our brain isn't always engaged like we think it is, instead it just kind of keeps busy with paying attention to anything new, sights, sounds, when someone talks to us, paying attention to the now.

When something happens to us that is traumatic, especially when we are so young, whatever that experience is, how it made us feel, how we are helped with it or not, becomes a part of us that we do our best to live around. However, if something happens that makes us feel unsafe or threatened, we are designed to remember that because a part of how we survive is avoiding "dangers and threats".

When you talk about how you finally needed help at age 23, if you were only 8 or 9 when you experienced that trauma, that is a lot of years living with that unresolved trauma day in and day out. When we don't have "help" to understand an experience growing up, we develop our own ways of "self protecting" privately. If something happened that really affected us emotionally, something we might develop shame over, or some kind of self blame, the more time that passes, the more we try to find ways to push it away so we can continue on with our lives.

Unfortunately, when you did try to talk about it, your brother encouraged you to feel bad, and that only added to your challenged emotions that you already had. Something like that affects how someone develops gradual "self esteem" and within that is our personal narcissism which is something we try to develop that is healthy and strong.

When you talk about reaching out for therapy/therapists and that they did not help you the way you needed, part of that is that not all therapists are very good at what they do, and the other part is that a therapist also is perceived as an "authority" type figure and in your case, you struggle to "trust" with authority type figures.

When you talk about questioning how much of what you experienced really happened and how much did not really happen, "what is real, what is fantasy", that is not unusual because of how old you were when that trauma took place. It's ok if you don't remember every single detail, because you don't have to, and you have lived a lot of years since then and during those years made an effort to try to forget and focus on the "now".

Any time someone else is able to listen to something that happened and gets to stand in a position of "monday morning quarter back", unfortunately that individual is looking at a situation with a lot more knowledge then if that individual experienced it first hand when there is not any way of knowing what an experience means. Your brother was also not mature enough to have the capacity to actually "empathize" and "comfort" and "validate". Also, if I remember correctly, your brother is also younger than you are, so in that alone he would most likely believe that because you are older you should have known more than you did. Unfortunately, with children and even teens, there seems to be an assumption that the older one is the more they should know. That is simply not the truth, while more knowledge is gained, there are so many things that are still simply not known. It is important to understand that children tend to be very narcissistic and the world revolves around them and their understanding of "empathy" and actually having the capacity to put themselves in another persons world has not developed yet.

Also, it is not unusual "sadly" for a child to be afraid to tell a parent when something like what you described takes place. Unfortunately, a lot of parents don't take the time to develop a relationship with their child where the child feels comfortable going to a parent for "help". Often the parent represents more of an authority presence and can be too judgemental and critical.

Because I struggled with some major challenges in my own childhood, I was afraid to ask for help. So, the one thing I have done in my life and make it a point to be a parent that not only my child, but other children feel "safe" to talk to and ask for "help". And because I did that with my own child, I ended up with a child that when her friends were seeing "abuse and neglect" taking place told her friends, "we can tell MY mom, she will hear us and do something". So, I sat in my car with my daughter and her friends telling me how they were upset about how a horse trainer was neglecting his little children badly. These children were afraid to tell their own parents about it, how sad is that? Also, the children were afraid of this trainer too. So, it isn't unusual for children to be afraid to "tell" and talk to their parents.

What happened to you was "wrong" and you did not get the right help for it. It's important that you understand that it was not your fault, and that unfortunately, children experience things they are afraid to talk about with their parents and unfortunately parents can get so "self involved" that they forget to make sure they develop a relationship with their children where their children are not afraid to come to them with the kind of challenge you experienced.

In all the years I have been not only a parent but taught many children how to ride, I always made myself "approachable" and have listened to children talk about things they would feel uncomforable talking about with their own parents. I lost count in how many times my daughter's friends said "I wish I could talk to my mom like you can talk to yours". So, please don't feel you are alone when you struggle with your own challenge in that area, because unfortunately you are not. Also, that is one of the things a predator looks for, a child that is not close to a parent and is more suseptable to befriending when it comes to an adult being "nice" to them. That is part of the picture you most likely never even thought of, no child thinks of that, never the child's fault.

The reaction you did have was something that kept you from becoming more of a victim too. You should give yourself some credit for that. What you did sent a message you had not even realized either, the way you reacted "stopped" that predator because in that moment your reaction proved that you would not be able to be groomed into what he had in mind. So, for a little boy of only 9 or 10, you were actually stronger than you realized, and realize now. You were not really a candidate that was willing to want an adult's attention so much that you could be led.