[ncal]

Hi everyone,

I'm new at this (posting, not the website) though I read the forums all the time.

I have PTSD with a problem of dissociation that stems from some trauma growing up. In my particular family I grew up with a mother who had untreated schizophrenia and a father who had bipolar with psychosis (was stable half of the time, once he got SSDI to pay for meds).

I've read a lot of stuff about PTSD and child abuse, however I was wondering if there are any resources on child abuse/mistreatment by mentally ill parents. For example, I have a very strong fear of my mother, absolutally 100% cannot see her and have only recently become more okay with hearing her voice on the phone. I've experienced very scary and bad things with her, however she really does love me. When bad things happened, it stemmed from her delusions or fears. When she was okay, she loved me and was nice. However the line could move within seconds. It's really hard to think of my mother both as someone I am so afraid of and as someone who truly loves me.

Also, does anyone have the experience where no childhood memory is good? I don't have very many, but even the ones that should be good (at a playground or a park) are terrible because I feel like I'm trapped again and with someone who could hurt me. I feel really attention seeking and stupid when my therapists asks me to think about some good memories as a child and I say there aren't any.

Thank you all for reading this, I really admire all of you, you all are very very strong.

[multipixie9]

ncal,

I am sorry that I do not have any info to help you on this area of need and I can see why you would need it. It sounds so horrible to live with such instability and danger every day/hour as a child. It must have been so scary and so confusing to live this way.

Like you I do not have many good memories at all, though I could real off horrors until someone shut me up. I would gladly tell anyone good stuff only first I have to HAVE IT. Then I need to be able to remember it.

Memory is what it is and childhood memories are felt as much as remembered and we were too little to explain things to ourselves and so many times what happened was just overwhelming and we did what we could to survive and that is it.

If your T doesn't understand that it is "can't" remember, not "won't" remember then he/she needs to grow as a therapist. I do believe that as I heal I may be able to recover some more good memories that got overshadowed by the pain/fear and abuse that surrounded me. If you are "beating yourself up for not having more good memories" I urge you to stop and just be kinder to yourself. You can't fake what is not there - nor should you ever feel you should. I've been in groups where they did "icebreakers" to get people talking and they were miserable for me because I DIDN'T have the kind of "feel-good" stories they sought. After a while I stopped going because it embarrassed me to be consistently unable to find a good thing to say about myself. That is not a good thing to keep going through. I hope you can maybe explain to your T that you don't want to fake something and you just don't have it.

My mother was severely abusive and cruel and she also was DID as I am and so I know there are some times when she was kinder than what she was most often (which was cruel). I had no security, no safety except what I could invent in my head. It was a frail shelter against a storm of abuses, but it got my through until my adult life got too much for a set of childhood defenses - then I began to breakdown and need help badly. Thankfully, I am now getting it.

I hope you can find any resources that exist for children dealing with the horrible unpredictability of mentally ill parents. I wish you well.

Leslie and her Pixies