Originally Posted by VAVeronica
Hi, I'm a new member here and I have a favor to ask you. I am 19 years old girl and I am currently in lot of pain. I am mentally ill a lot. I suffer from depression, anxiety, self-harming, suicidal thoughts, social phobia and mainly from conversion disorder which caused me to be restricted to bed rest for two years now.Please, would you be so kind and read my life story and give me your opinion if I was emotionally abused or not? When I talked to my therapist, she told I wasn’t, so I am very lost right now.
My parents divorced when I was 4 years old and since then I was raised by my grandmother. My mother is a nurse and throughout my childhood we haven’t spent much time together because she was always very busy. So, my grandmother became more like a mother a to me.
During my sessions in therapy I realized that my problems are connected to my childhood, mainly to my grandma. Our relationship wasn’t always good, but that was because I thought it was my fault that she was hurting me. I believed I was stupid and I felt hurt only because I’m just hypersensitive.
Now I am trying to remember everything she has ever done to me. I am in a lot of pain, when all these thigs are coming back to me, these flashbacks I feel like I have PTSD or something.
I think that her mean behavior started when I was five or six, around the age kids go to school. My grandmother is a very performance goal-oriented person. So, she wanted me to basically study all the time, 5 to 6 hours a day and she always wanted perfect results from me.
I remember the first time when I was learning to read and write, she was already yelling at me, how can I make so many mistakes. I had to study until there were no mistakes, and I need to know everything before we would learn it even at school. It was just too much for me… When I had enough and wanted to rest, she would be calling me names like moron, brat, lazy and what an ungrateful, spoiled child I am. She would exploit my love for my mother into convincing me that I needed to learn so much. She said horrible things like: „Your mom is suffering because of you, “ „Something bad is going to happen to your mom if you’re not going to have good results”. She would threaten me that if I wasn’t going to listen to her, she would stop helping my mom (financially, looking after me, doing housework and so on…) Even when I was obeying her and diligently studying, she would burst out on me, how can I be so incredibly dumb, and how many times does she need it to ****ing explain it to me. Perfect grades weren’t enough I had to participate in singing and writing competitions etc. She would tell me, that the price would help my mom and somehow, I believed it. She was always compering me to other people like my sister, my cousin, my classmates and herself, telling me to try ****ing harder because they’re better than me. This was happening all the time…
She would also threaten me to beat me up, punch me but she usually didn’t act on it. There were some incidents, when she would be dragging me on the ground, holding me to tightly, pulling my arm or she would maybe lightly slap me on the head, but never nothing serious! Never! But she was very aggressive, she would for example punch the table, wall, throw my schoolbooks at me and often bang doors loudly. Sometimes when she wasn’t able to scare me, and I was still resisting her, she would start crying, telling me that she’s about to pass out, that her head was spinning and everything was hurting her. She was telling me things like: “How can you do this to me?” “You are going to kill me.” “How can you be so cruel to me, when I am so nice?” She would play the victim and she has always won like that, the guilt eaten me up. Oftentimes she started acting like a child. She was screaming, stomping, making faces, spitting out angrily, making exaggerated gestures. She would be making fun of me by impersonating me.
When it started, I told my mom about it, but it only became worse, grandma denied everything. She told me that I am just a crybaby who makes things up. Her behavior would get even worse after that. She was punishing me for telling on her, for as she said I was only worrying my mother, bothering her. She banned me telling her things. After trying few times, I gave up. Every time I was about to cry or started crying, she would either say: “Why are you crying, do you want me to give you a reason to cry?” “What kind of games are you playing” or she would show affection to me, but also told me things like I’m doing this to help you, broadly speaking: “I’m sorry but it’s all your fault.”
After 5 years of this I kind of gave up, I decided to become good daughter and stopped completely getting on her nerves. After 5th grade she stopped teaching me, because she wasn’t able to keep up with the schoolwork… So instead she became my supervisor. Constantly guarding if I am learning. She would ether sit in the same room watching me or she was peeking at me through keyhole. She would spontaneously rush to my room, open violently door and scream at me, if I am learning or the opposite she would be sneaking behind my back and then start screaming into my ear. It may sound kind of funny, but I always got so scared. I had a panic attack one time because of this. If she caught me doing something else, like watching videos, she would of course yell that I need to study, but if she caught me studying, she would tell that I am overworking myself and should rest or that I should do something else like play my guitar or clean. I was always doing something wrong.
She was getting scolded because of little insignificant things (at least that’s how I see it now, back then I thought I was just terrible daughter). She would scream at me and curse when I closed the door to loudly, walked to loudly, forgot to turn off the lights, according to her wasted to much stuff or didn’t clean after myself. And even if I did clean, she would yell that I did it wrong. She was able to yell from morning to evening, all the time, name calling me how incapable, stupid and useless I am. She said thig like that “even a table or celling is more capable to listen to her than me”. From the moment I woke up she would already be criticizing me. I felt like I was walking on eggshells all the time, I tried my best not to do anything, be good and useful but she would always find something.
This behavior would last couple of days, but sometimes she was actually in a good mood and acted nicely. Every time it happened, I thought to myself: “Wow, I guess I am really the bad guy here. I am sorry grandma, I will try to be better.” Sometimes she was ignoring me, I guess. All day she was making those blaming faces, those looks… like I did something terrible, when I asked her about it, she would either not answer at all or tell me than she isn’t angry. She was always banging doors when leaving the room, moving things loudly and violently… It’s hard to explain, it was passive aggressive behavior, I guess? She would also use sarcasm a lot. She would insist on something and the other day say, that she doesn‘t care about it, that it’s not for her but for me and I can do whatever I want.
I could never satisfy her. I feel like I have always listened to her, but she still punished me and said mean thigs to me. She wanted me to be this perfect, overworking, goal-oriented monster, and when I became one, she criticized me for it, saying things like: “How can you be such a perfectionist?” “Why is school so important to you?” “Why is your self-esteem so low?”
In front of others she would change her behavior. She would be praising me how good I am, skillful and obeying.
I thought that this was emotional abuse, but when I talked to my therapist (I had 3 so far, and they all basically told me the same). That it’s not and emotional abuse, my grandma did some mistakes, and wasn’t acting very good, but other people had it much worse than me, also that I am very sensitive person and that, I was very well taken care of, my basic needs were fulfilled.
I was telling myself this my whole life so I can’t disagree with her. I do remember her acting also good to me, when I was sick and things like that… when I was doing good at school, she would be praising me… She was also with certain things overprotective of like doing sports, to not get hurt. But I just don’t understand why I’m so mentally sick right now, If it’s not an abuse. Also my conversion disorder is getting better, after realizing that the cause is my grandma.
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