Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael W. Harris
Dissociation is a hidden mental illness in most cases because the dysfunctional family promotes, through ignorance, the mental illness. In my case it was ignorance not maliciousness. Except, my brother's abuse was maliciousness. My parents had no parenting skills and my Mom actually had very bad ideas in her head about parenting toddlers. She never considered her toddler's emotional and psychological welfare!!! So all her children were emotionally traumatized by the age of three. I got it worse because my Brother was allowed to abuse me to vent his problems. Mom believed that sibling bullying or hazing was normal.
But, if you develop a dissociative disorder late in life it only means that the mental illness had been hidden during your childhood. The child cannot deal with the insanity of the dysfunctional family. The family that traumatizes a toddler, as in my case, has no empathy for the toddler's feelings and emotions. Also dysfunctional families lack any sane communication skills. They generally do not communicate with the child enough to recognize memory problems or amnesia which is occurring all throughout childhood.
You do not develop a dissociative disorder late in life. It just was hidden until something triggered the symptoms to become obvious.
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I would like to add to this post. I want to expound on the statement, "The child cannot deal with the dysfunctional family."
Why?? Because it does not matter how the child behaves! As in my case, the child will be mistreated regardless of behavior. The child will be isolated within the family regardless of behavior. The response of the mentally ill parents will never be sane. The abuse of the sick brother was never sane. The older sibling develops jealousy of the new born. Bad parenting pushes that illogical reaction to overt hatred of the sibling. There was never a rational reason for the sick brother to abuse his younger brother! But, the brother still justifies his behavior with his sick logic.
The child, as in my case, has no sane rational adult to help him understand. The mind gets broken during the toddler years and never heals completely because the insanity never stops. The communication never gets better so the child does not know that he/she is having memory problems and blips of amnesia from switching in and out of this state of shock that he/she was put into as a toddler.