That is what came out of EMDR this week, after we did it on the sounds of that trigger of that other client hitting a pillow next door.

I think it is different because a lot of abuse victims think negatively about themselves. I don't think I did or do, but I just wanted to die and if I had any concept of how to kill myself at such a young age, I probably would have. I told my T. I guess thinking about it now, it shows how bad things really were, I just wanted someone to take me out of my misery when I was that young, I was trapped with no escape. T asked me why I didn't leave with her during that trigger when she asked me if I wanted to go for a walk outside.
My legs were so tense because I think my body was telling me to run, but I couldn't I just froze like I did when I was a child, I don't know to escape. Then T wanted me to feel that feeling of wanting to die while we did EMDR, but I couldn't feel anything at that point, I mentally checked out then. I said something that I think I was already dead, and she wanted to go with that thought with EMDR, but I couldn't feel anything. It was just words at that point.
I remember during the time I was triggered and when my T asked if It was okay to come closer to tap on my knees. I think I said, "I am not afraid of you." This comment now has me wondering if I was at a younger state or something because it sounds very childlike to me.

I know I dissociate when I am triggered, T has seen this and I know I do now for the first time. But if I am triggered into acting like a younger state, does that mean I have multiplies?

(((((((((((((Exotic)))))))))))))))

One of my earliest memories is of putting the stem of a dried flower into an electrical outlet because I thought it would kill me - I had been told REPEATEDLY never to put anything into the electrical outlet. I was probably 3 or 4. So, I can so relate to what you are saying

As for dissociation/being multiple....there are lots of different levels of dissociation, parts, etc...from PTSD stuff all the way to DID with lots of stuff in between. Dissociation is really common with PTSD (you probably already know that!!). T can help you sort out what's going on.

((((((((((((((Hugs))))))))))))) to you!

Thanks Tree,

I keep thinking about the dog experiment I learned about in psych class, the Seligman experiment where dogs eventually gave up and just took the shocks even when later they could escape, they just learned to be helpless. I wonder if that is what I felt? It makes sense especially as a child because you really can't escape from that on your own. Chronic child abuse I think does that.

So now I am wondering if that is why I go to pieces with PTSD when my mom threatens me or my family. I haven't learned how to escape or fight back. I remember my brother fighting with me and he was hurting me and tried so hard to hit him back or to hurt him back and I couldn't do it. It sounds easy enough to just escape, but I think if you were conditioned to a state of learned helplessness, that is what is ingrained within you.

Here I go with intellectually trying to figure this out.

I guess the part that is concerns me about the dissociation now isn't that fact that I do it (that was the big thing I learned this summer) but how react when I am doing it. Sometimes I just numb out and sometimes during the EMDR I act much like a child. I don't know if that is due to going back to that memory (flashback?) as a child or is it something else. It is just something I am noticing because it feels weird to act like a child in fear and anger.

during all the horriffic abuse as a child i was ready to die...looked forward to it..practiced it..even pretended to be be dead (thinking that if i pretended to be dead then maybe someone would notice and take me to where they took dead people).

i have "peeps" that managed to damn near kill me as a child all the time..always getting me serioulsy hurt and needing medical care so the abuse would end....and upon occasion they still do when things get a bit too stressed now.

as a kid i didn't fear death at all...and the same is true now, as an adult. i think its because i have been ever so close...maybe thats why suicide is a draw to me...i have told my t...you can do many things and we can have many plans etc but you can not take any that option...i have to keep that open...its a safety net...and escape...its hard to explain...like knowing there is one brick in the wall that is loose that no one else knows about but you. nothing may ever come it and you may never have to use that brick but it is good to know its there. i think about death and dying often but thankfully now i never act on it....not like before.

childhood abuse hardens you in ways no child should ever be molded.a 4 yr old should never have to contemplate dying by their own hand.

[mixedup_emotions]

Originally Posted by exoticflower

I keep thinking about the dog experiment I learned about in psych class, the Seligman experiment where dogs eventually gave up and just took the shocks even when later they could escape, they just learned to be helpless. I wonder if that is what I felt? It makes sense especially as a child because you really can't escape from that on your own. Chronic child abuse I think does that.

I first heard about this experiment from my T, after I had told him briefly about my parents being physically abusive....I used to be afraid...then eventually, just accepted it....and ultimately, looked forward to being beaten and encouraged it. It was strange to feel so....textbook.

I am struggling with working through this in T, because things changed when I was an adult and I love my parents to pieces. This is the one area that I've avoided working through....

And since my dad died 2-1/2 years ago, it's made it even harder to deal with because I have such conflicting feelings....anger, guilt, sadness, intense love and loyalty...

And I always felt as though it was my fault. I asked for it. I deserved it. I must have.

I don't know when I'm going to be able to deal with these feelings in therapy. It's just too much of a struggle.

I am thinking that maybe I did actually die. There is this dark part inside of me, I have told my T it isn't a negative about how I feel about myself,(which she first thought) it is just dead I think. Maybe it is the child inside of me, a childhood I never had, so that part just died. It is like I have many outer layers build up around that deadness, I look like an adult, like a real person, but inside it is dead. The child inside is dead because she was never allowed to live. I am like a hollow tree.

If you look at my painting below, the middle blackness with the tiny heart is me as a child. The blue is my grandma hugging me. I guess at least there is still a heart there.

I sometimes wonder if when I fragmented, I created a grown up part to go through life for me, and if my youngest part is actually the REAL ME.

I have no idea what to do with that thought, though. It makes my heart race.

I get what you're saying, ((((((((((flower))))))))))

[skeksi]

Originally Posted by exoticflower

It is like I have many outer layers build up around that deadness, I look like an adult, like a real person, but inside it is dead. The child inside is dead because she was never allowed to live. I am like a hollow tree.

exotic, I feel this way, too. You put it quite eloquently.

[billieJ]

Dear Exoticflower ~ I feel inadequate compared to those above in responding to you, as my childhood "abuse", if you can call it that, consisted of exorbitant expectations. I am so sorry for what you went through and I think you are right that you simply stopped responding, like the dogs you speak of, because you could not escape. Your post triggers me only in the rage in causes against your purpetrators. I can only say that what goes around, comes around, and that there seems to be [to me] fairness in the universe, if not in the world we live in. May you have a good day for every bad one. That will be a bunch of good days! A friend ~ billieJ

Originally Posted by stumpy

childhood abuse hardens you in ways no child should ever be molded.a 4 yr old should never have to contemplate dying by their own hand.

(((Stumpy))) I think this really sums it up about child abuse. I don't remember ever trying to end my life, but maybe I was already feeling dead on the inside. What else is there really? The outside is battered and the inside is dead, that seem really dead to me.

So does that deadness ever go away? Can I put light there somehow and wake it up? Or is it a lost cause.

I do know for sure, that just because I have some deadness on the inside, my adult layer is authentic and sometimes it seems like that layer is a lot better morally than others I see who don't have a dead child within them.

While I don't remember myself trying to end my life, my brother who was 2 years younger, did do some of the things that was mentioned. That is why people didn't expect his injuries to be from my mom because he did stuff like to himself too. But he is really dead now, because the injuries he sustained from child abuse is the cause of why he died 2yrs. ago or I should say murdered.
Stumpy I hope you are okay, I hope this post didn't trigger you. It seems to have upset people I think and I feel bad about that.

Originally Posted by mixedup_emotions

I first heard about this experiment from my T, after I had told him briefly about my parents being physically abusive....I used to be afraid...then eventually, just accepted it....and ultimately, looked forward to being beaten and encouraged it. It was strange to feel so....textbook.

This is so incredibly sad that you had to go through that. It is weird how even something so traumatic can also feel comfortable because it is all we know and come to expect it. Even abusive predictive stuff feels better than not knowing when or how or if.
(((Mixed up))))

I am struggling with working through this in T, because things changed when I was an adult and I love my parents to pieces. This is the one area that I've avoided working through....

I can't say I even loved my mom, she mean absolutely nothing to me other than fear. But for my dad, he died of colon cancer a couple of days before X-mas in 1999. He made a lot of mistakes that parents can make who don't know better, but he was never outright evil with me. I do feel a love for him but still he was abusive in other ways. But can a parent be a worse abuser than an another? I am not sure, but I do think there is abuse and there is torture abuse, both are really bad, but the 2nd one is more of what I am reading about that is called ritual abuse,. That was my mom. My dad was more neglect and some emotional abuse, but he never physically or sexually abused me. So his abuse doesn't seem as traumatic to me, but that is just me.Or perhaps what I did experience with my mom, everything else paled in comparison.
And since my dad died 2-1/2 years ago, it's made it even harder to deal with because I have such conflicting feelings....anger, guilt, sadness, intense love and loyalty...

And I always felt as though it was my fault. I asked for it. I deserved it. I must have.

I don't know why, but I don't think I ever thought this, and it is certainly unusual as my T has heard many more who feel this way than not. But lately I am wondering if maybe that part is not present in my thinking somehow.
I don't know when I'm going to be able to deal with these feelings in therapy. It's just too much of a struggle.

Therapy is really hard, I think you will get there when you are ready and if it takes a lifetime, so what? Can you imagine going through all of this without therapy?

Originally Posted by skeksi

exotic, I feel this way, too. You put it quite eloquently.

I am sorry you can relate. Do you think you can ever make alive that dead part? Sometimes I am afraid if I peal away all the adult layers there will nothing left.

It reminds me of the other day when I was peeling potatoes and there was this huge beautiful potato but when I cut into it there was a dark hole that couldn't be seen from the outside. I felt like that potato. There was a darkness, but it was hollow darkness.

Originally Posted by exoticflower

I am sorry you can relate. Do you think you can ever make alive that dead part? Sometimes I am afraid if I peal away all the adult layers there will nothing left.

It reminds me of the other day when I was peeling potatoes and there was this huge beautiful potato but when I cut into it there was a dark hole that couldn't be seen from the outside. I felt like that potato. There was a darkness, but it was hollow darkness.

First off, major hugs to everyone in here, especially exotic.

T and I talked about this very thing tonight - I was trying to describe the physical sensations that go along with this intense sadness that comes up from my core being. I told T that it was an ache in my chest, only it was very hollow - a "hollow darkness" really sums it up well, exotic!

[quote=billieJ;1221047]Dear Exoticflower ~ I feel inadequate compared to those above in responding to you, as my childhood "abuse", if you can call it that, consisted of exorbitant expectations. I am so sorry for what you went through and I think you are right that you simply stopped responding, like the dogs you speak of, because you could not escape. Your post triggers me only in the rage in causes against your purpetrators. I can only say that what goes around, comes around, and that there seems to be [to me] fairness in the universe, if not in the world we live in. May you have a good day for every bad one. That will be a bunch of good days! A friend ~ billieJ

Thanks Billie but you know, all of this stuff brings down a child's spirit, it is all abuse, all abuse if bad. Don't feel your abuse wasn't abuse simply because you weren't hurt with physical injuries, emotion abuse hurts way more and I think even sexual abuse (which I didn't experience) hurts even more yet, but it all hurts our emotions the most.

But as far as that anger against perpetrators, GOOD! If you feel angry, help out with that cause in any way you can. You might save a child or lots of children. Here is how you can help....http://www.preventchildabuse.org/index.shtml

The thing about what comes around goes around is a hard thing for me to hear. My mom threatens to kill my husband and kids so I will know what it feels like to be abandoned. After my dad died, I stopped all contact with her and she wants to teach me a lesson because I abandoned her. (that sort of gives a clue on how evil she really is and how she thinks) Her last message was what come around goes around to me.

But for me no matter what happened to me or what she has done, I just can't feel comfortable with anyone feeling any kind of pain that I went through, even her. I want nothing to do with her, and she means nothing to me, but I can't wish for her to be harmed, or any human really. There probably had to be a lot of pain in her childhood too, for her to become so evil. We are alike in that way,(the pain part, not the evil) except I didn't pass it down to my own kids. I stopped that cycle before I even had them.

Thanks so much for your support

Originally Posted by dreamseeker9

First off, major hugs to everyone in here, especially exotic.

T and I talked about this very thing tonight - I was trying to describe the physical sensations that go along with this intense sadness that comes up from my core being. I told T that it was an ache in my chest, only it was very hollow - a "hollow darkness" really sums it up well, exotic!

(((Dreamer)))

You know as I was reading your 2 posts tonight, I felt exactly what you were describing. Sometimes it is almost eerie how so many of our experiences are related. It is so sad that so many of us have experienced this, it is so sad what child abuse does to a child and not just the child, but the adult they become.
Is there anything that can fill up that hollowness? Sometimes it seems when I talk of darkness inside, my T thinks it is "something" but really it is "nothing." Can that be filled up somehow? I wish I knew, I have hope there is.

Originally Posted by exoticflower

Is there anything that can fill up that hollowness? Sometimes it seems when I talk of darkness inside, my T thinks it is "something" but really it is "nothing." Can that be filled up somehow? I wish I knew, I have hope there is.

I have hope that somehow, we can fill it up, too. I think I had the notion that if I were to receive this comfort from T, it would help - it did feel very comforting, and it helped to let out the sadness. I can't say yet if it helped fill up the hollowness, it's too early for me to feel that one way or the other.

[BlueMoon6]

Exotic- I had a very difficult time reading this. Not because of you. I dont want you to think you did anything wrong. We are here to learn and to support each other. And I cant say I was triggered. It brought up a lot of feelings for me and memories, too. Im so sorry that you had to endure what you did and I can can relate to it, too. I am in an "I dont want to deal with this ***t" kind of place tonight.

I relate to that dead place inside, that place where no one can go. My heart breaks for you and for your brother, too. My brother has the same dead place inside, and it is much more obvious than with me. I dont remember if I was sui as a small child, but as a very young child I had fantasies of stabbing my mother. I know I was very young b/c of where we lived at the time. I always had these thoughts of killing her. It is awful and strange to write it out here, but I was so dead to her from such a young age that I cannot ever remember loving feelings toward her. As I got older I felt more sui.

I think if you were conditioned to a state of learned helplessness, that is what is ingrained within you.

To me, this is very sad and very deeply profound. This learned helplessness. Feeling paralysed even though the way out if right in front of you. I do this in more ways that I can count.

[mixedup_emotions]

With my parents, the abuse pretty much ended when I became "the good girl" and their caretaker when I became an adult - and I love them tremendously. My dad was such a lovable, funny man who left us way before I was ready.

That's what makes it so hard for me, I think, to work through the trauma. Because I have such love and loyalty to them...and it feels so incredibly awful to remember the past...It was so easy to accept the blame for it. I deserved it. I asked for it. I wanted it. I encouraged it.

That makes it ok, for me.

But I feel as though I am being pressured into realizing that it's not my fault...and that blaming myself is a way of self-protection, of coping. And I can't face that. I can't. I won't. It causes such incredible pain and sadness.

I sometimes feel as though therapy is the reason for all this pain. I wish I could've gone on, oblivious to feeling any differently than I had for all those years.....because even questioning it is agonizing. I feel as though, had I not been in therapy, I wouldn't have known any different and wouldn't be in this mess.

And worse yet, I've learned so much about how those who were abused as children are easier targets for other types of abuse...which leads me to the CSA experiences that I had....and then ultimately ending up with an emotionally, mentally and somewhat sexually abusive husband. And that those who experience childhood abuse end up with migraines and major depression. That's ME.

It is too overwhelming to put that kind of blame on my parents who I love so much.

Sorry to ramble on...I guess I'm just going with my feelings at the moment, as the tears roll down my face.

Originally Posted by BlueMoon6

Exotic- I had a very difficult time reading this. Not because of you. I dont want you to think you did anything wrong. We are here to learn and to support each other. And I cant say I was triggered. It brought up a lot of feelings for me and memories, too. Im so sorry that you had to endure what you did and I can can relate to it, too. I am in an "I dont want to deal with this ***t" kind of place tonight.

I am in that place where I don't want to deal with this **** anymore too.I really felt torn whether I should post this thread or not. It was such a huge moment in therapy in understanding my feelings of what happened to me, I wanted to discuss it but I didn't want to upset anyone either. It sure seems to have brought up a lot in some people, even myself reading the responses from others. It is so hard to feel this, I wonder how many of us feel this. I have covered it up for decades, sometimes I wonder if it should be kept buried. But after last week when that other lady triggered me while I was in therapy, I couldn't deny it any longer.

I relate to that dead place inside, that place where no one can go. My heart breaks for you and for your brother, too. My brother has the same dead place inside, and it is much more obvious than with me. I dont remember if I was sui as a small child, but as a very young child I had fantasies of stabbing my mother. I know I was very young b/c of where we lived at the time. I always had these thoughts of killing her. It is awful and strange to write it out here, but I was so dead to her from such a young age that I cannot ever remember loving feelings toward her. As I got older I felt more sui.

I am not sure what sui is, I am sure it is obvious, but I am not thinking so great right now. I really miss my brother, i can't believe he is dead, there was no funeral or anything and I guess it feels hard to move on. I was so sad a few months ago (the 2nd anniv. of his death) when I tried to look up his obituary for the exact date he died, and I couldn't find it. It was like he just disappeared forever and nobody cares. He wore his pain on the outside and I wore mine on the inside.

To me, this is very sad and very deeply profound. This learned helplessness. Feeling paralysed even though the way out if right in front of you. I do this in more ways that I can count.

Moon, I really don't know what to say, I think it speaks to a lot of us that have gone through this. Please take care, okay.

Mixed

I am honored you wrote what you felt, I can see how mixed up it must feel.

Please know your tears are from healing, even just a little, it is so hard and I feel bad that those things happened to you.

I thought I was all alone in feeling this, and I can see how this has affected you and so many others on such a deep level.

I just wish we could all give each other a big hug and let us all cry together, grieve, heal....

[mixedup_emotions]

Originally Posted by exoticflower

Mixed

I am honored you wrote what you felt, I can see how mixed up it must feel.

Please know your tears are from healing, even just a little, it is so hard and I feel bad that those things happened to you.

I thought I was all alone in feeling this, and I can see how this has affected you and so many others on such a deep level.

I just wish we could all give each other a big hug and let us all cry together, grieve, heal....

Thank you....

I am glad you posted this. Even though it was hard to read and then assess my feelings and relatedness, it brought out more about my own struggles - which I know, somehow, ultimately helps me too. So, thank you....This is the stuff that I can't seem to bring myself to talk about in therapy....so this is me, one step closer to healing, I hope.