Quote:
Originally Posted by Soybeans
Sorry, I'm just going to go for it and add more relevant details I'll take down the post after if anyone finds me. This hypothetical a kid was 7 years old, car accident kills one parent, the other was not in the car or injured. Surviving parent drops kid off at a foster family in another country with a different language with no indication that the parent is coming back and the foster family was abusive and kid witnessed physical and verbal abuse of other kids as well. 2 years pass with zero contact from surviving parent except a birthday card. Surviving parent goes to pick up and see their 9 year old kid for the first time in 2 years, the kid has NO memory of the parent, doesn't recognize the parent, parent is a complete and total stranger, AND the kid doesn't remember anything concrete about life leading up to the accident with no childhood memories of anything before being placed in the foster family, just very vague details like the kid obviously lived with their parents but has no recollection of what that looks like or feels. The kid also doesn't remember the first country's language either. Surviving parent is not particularly excited to be reunited with the kid, and is very emotionally neglectful.
I just have such a hard time putting this kid and the actual me together. On paper it sounds not great, but I mean the kid ended up being a functional adult with a career and is married so this shouldn't be such a big deal right?? All the other mental health problems I ended up with like anorexia and depression and stuff is really my own fault for not coping with healthier methods right??
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Oh Soybeans. Human beings are so amazing. So resilient. The will to develop and grow and adapt to life is nothing less than astounding. What the child-you did to
adapt to the sudden, overwhelming and incredibly traumatic change in your life circumstances was both brilliant and mundane, soul-destroying (the loss of the previous self) and functional (the creation of a "new" self to continue growth and development). In terms of human psychology it was even predictable.
That child had two options: be completely overwhelmed with grief for family and self, or "get on with it". To be overwhelmed with grief would have meant the child could not adapt to the new circumstance, could not continue on with learning and development. To continue on with learning and development would require the suppression of all grief. The way to suppress all grief is to not have anything that was lost (denial and dissociation of all that came before).
Obviously the "best" option was to continue on with learning and development, "unaffected" by anything that came before.
That in no way means that what happened before was of no consequence. What happened before mattered to the degree of
everything. What happened before
was everything. It just had to be forgotten so you could continue on.
The human adaptive response to such overwhelming trauma at such a young age is dissociation.
What you describe - your complete forgetting of the trauma - points to you using that very "normal" adaptive response.
Edited to add - the anorexia and depression is also an expected by-product of unresolved trauma. Not because you weren't "better" at coping, not because you were at fault in any way.