[Snuffleupagus]

So, in last week's session I got really honest with T about the chaos and continual air of intimidation and tension in my FOO growing up which was punctuated by at least weekly fights that always verged on violence and occasionally teetered over. I talked about how much terror I felt as a kid, my dad's obsession with the house being perfectly clean, how I hid to stay out of the cross fire. She said the regular threats of violence and the systematic degradation that dad inflicted on everyone else made it an environment of domestic violence. I had never thought of it in those terms. I pointed out there was never any honeymoon period; dad was just dad.

When we talked this week about the response I had visiting my parents last weekend--a rush of fear before I got there and a panic attack while I was there, she started talking about the intensity of those feelings and other symptoms I'd mentioned, she said it seemed to suggest that I had ptsd issues from my upbringing. In a way, it makes a lot of sense. There's just another part of me that says other people had it so much worse. I'm trying to wrap my mind around this. I felt pretty freaked after the session. My T was kind and supportive. She told me that given how I grew up, I could be so much more fu cked up (although on the inside when she said that, I thought, "More than I already am? Doubtful.") She thinks my intelligence saved me from some of the damage I could have incurred. I don't know. I wonder why my previous T never made this connection. She just kept banging away with CBT and failing miserably. It feels like that stuff can barely touch my inner critic, and it was not for lack of trying. I parted on nasty terms with my exT, but she did tell me in my last session that she had never had a patient who worked as hard as me which surprised the he11 out of me.

I feel like the Dude in the Big Lebowski, and all this new sh it has come to light, man. A lot of strands in the old duder's head. How do I integrate this into my understanding of myself?

[unaluna]

Originally Posted by Snuffleupagus

She told me that given how I grew up, I could be so much more fu cked up (although on the inside when she said that, I thought, "More than I already am? Doubtful.") She thinks my intelligence saved me from some of the damage I could have incurred. I don't know. I wonder why my previous T never made this connection.

yeah, all of the above also applies to me and my best friend who is now a T. like her T told her, people who grow up like you, usually end up as prostitutes. I think some T's grow up in too nice of houses? And the babyboom was the great class equalizer.

[Snuffleupagus]

Originally Posted by hankster

yeah, all of the above also applies to me and my best friend who is now a T. like her T told her, people who grow up like you, usually end up as prostitutes. I think some T's grow up in too nice of houses? And the babyboom was the great class equalizer.

Well at least I have a fallback career.

[unaluna]

Originally Posted by Snuffleupagus

Well at least I have a fallback career.

My mother always says i'll starve, but that's okay cos I need to lose weight. Nice.

When I told my mom I was just going to become a prostitute, she told me "You'd go broke makin' change".

I never really understood what that meant, but I love it.

[Snuffleupagus]

Originally Posted by hankster

My mother always says i'll starve, but that's okay cos I need to lose weight. Nice.

Your mom is just sweet as plum pudding.

But, seriously, I don't know how to get past the compulsive minimization that's getting in the way of my acceptance of seeing this in myself. I do trust my T's instincts, and seeing many of my problems as the result of ptsd has a ring of truth to it. But I vacillate between that attitude and just thinking, "No way! That can't be true. It seemed so normal at the time. "

Originally Posted by Snuffleupagus

So, in last week's session I got really honest with T about the chaos and continual air of intimidation and tension in my FOO growing up which was punctuated by at least weekly fights that always verged on violence and occasionally teetered over. I talked about how much terror I felt as a kid, my dad's obsession with the house being perfectly clean, how I hid to stay out of the cross fire. She said the regular threats of violence and the systematic degradation that dad inflicted on everyone else made it an environment of domestic violence.

Thank you so much for posting this. I read it when I woke up this morning and a light bulb went off in my head. Other than the violence (which is obviously a significant difference- I'm so sorry), it perfectly describes my family. My father is extremely rigid and highly demanding. He is always on the verge of exploding. My mother lives to ensure that nothing sets him off, and her role was to monitor everything we did and said to ensure that it would be acceptable to him. Even now (the youngest of us is 24) she will check what we are going to say before we are allowed to speak to him. She screens, rearranges and moderates every single thing that reaches my father, trying to make him happy. I don't even think she realises it. And he is never happy.

This Christmas, we were sitting round the dining table and my brother went to light a sort of 'celebration bomb' (bursts with streamers and party hats and jokes). Without even thinking, my sister and I both leapt up like we'd been shot, and ran around like headless chickens moving anything that could be broken, damaged, knocked over, as well as fretting about the table and advising him not to do it. My father just sat there watching us. I realised he has got the rest of us meeting his needs so effectively, and pandering to his obsessions, that he doesn't need to do anything himself. Ugh.

My mother is actually very loving and nurturing and definitely a more than good enough mother. I realise now how resentful I must have felt growing up for my mother to be meeting my needs, only to suddenly drop me as soon as my father came home or was around. A couple of weeks ago I was ill while staying at my parents' house. My mum waited till my dad had gone to bed, then sweetly made me a sandwich and brought it to me on a tray. She had just got inside the door when she heard movement from my father's room. 'Oh God', she said, 'He must have got up again'. And she shot out of the room to 'see what he wanted', taking my sandwich with her.
It also makes more sense of how much I resent T's husband's silent presence in the background. Ill defined but somehow so threatening to my relationship with T.

Even worse- my ex-partner used to tell me I was becoming like my father, and I see now that she was right, in the sense that my needs ruled, and everyone was running around to try to meet them out of fear as to what would happen if I wasn't ok (e.g. my suicide). I recreated the only kind of relationship I saw growing up. God help me.

So sorry for thread hijack. Thank you for posting.

[unaluna]

(((((improving))))) thankn you for your story, if only to let me know that there are mothers in the world who bring their kids food in bed when they're sick. mine always made me come to the table then said that proved I wasn't that sick, so I could go to school the next day.

snuffle, hiding at the top of the linen closet sounds like something out of Anne Frank's diary. cptsd IS a thousand little cuts. Little acts of meanness and neglect, every day, wear you down, just as little acts of support and kindness, every day, I read once, created geniuses like Mozart and woolf. But then there's Beethoven - not a very happy childhood, so... we still have a chance for greatness.

[Snuffleupagus]

Originally Posted by Improving

Thank you so much for posting this. I read it when I woke up this morning and a light bulb went off in my head. Other than the violence (which is obviously a significant difference- I'm so sorry), it perfectly describes my family. My father is extremely rigid and highly demanding. He is always on the verge of exploding. My mother lives to ensure that nothing sets him off, and her role was to monitor everything we did and said to ensure that it would be acceptable to him. Even now (the youngest of us is 24) she will check what we are going to say before we are allowed to speak to him. She screens, rearranges and moderates every single thing that reaches my father, trying to make him happy. I don't even think she realises it. And he is never happy.

This Christmas, we were sitting round the dining table and my brother went to light a sort of 'celebration bomb' (bursts with streamers and party hats and jokes). Without even thinking, my sister and I both leapt up like we'd been shot, and ran around like headless chickens moving anything that could be broken, damaged, knocked over, as well as fretting about the table and advising him not to do it. My father just sat there watching us. I realised he has got the rest of us meeting his needs so effectively, and pandering to his obsessions, that he doesn't need to do anything himself. Ugh.

My mother is actually very loving and nurturing and definitely a more than good enough mother. I realise now how resentful I must have felt growing up for my mother to be meeting my needs, only to suddenly drop me as soon as my father came home or was around. A couple of weeks ago I was ill while staying at my parents' house. My mum waited till my dad had gone to bed, then sweetly made me a sandwich and brought it to me on a tray. She had just got inside the door when she heard movement from my father's room. 'Oh God', she said, 'He must have got up again'. And she shot out of the room to 'see what he wanted', taking my sandwich with her.
It also makes more sense of how much I resent T's husband's silent presence in the background. Ill defined but somehow so threatening to my relationship with T.

Even worse- my ex-partner used to tell me I was becoming like my father, and I see now that she was right, in the sense that my needs ruled, and everyone was running around to try to meet them out of fear as to what would happen if I wasn't ok (e.g. my suicide). I recreated the only kind of relationship I saw growing up. God help me.

So sorry for thread hijack. Thank you for posting.

No worries. Feel free to jack away in my threads. I relate strongly to what you wrote. I know I have been my father in many ways, and coming to that realization hurt like hell. I was on a ptsd forum yesterday and I read this fascinating thread where someone talked about switching between acting like their narcissistic parent and their own wounded child role which hit me like a ton of bricks because I see this dualism in myself all the time. In AA, they call it "Feeling like a piece of sh it that the world revolves around." So, I've been familiar with the feelings, but I'd never heard such a concise explanation before. Those are the two modes of being that I know best from experiencing it (the wounded child) and having it modeled constantly (the narcissistic parent).

I know that I experienced my mom not protecting me by removing me from the situation as an abandonment, but this has only become conscious in the last few years. For Christmas every year, one of my sisters would always ask for my parents to get divorced, but Santa never brought that one. A couple of years ago my mom finally gave me a slightly more satisfying answer to why she stayed with dad. Her first husband was rampantly physically abusive, even a murder suspect but they didn't have enough evidence to put him away. My dad's rage was much more controlled with regard to violence but was terrifying enough that dad scared the shite out of mom's first husband and kept him away from her and her kids. So, she withstood dad's rage because it served a protective function in her twisted mind. 'Tis a proud, robust heritage I have.

Originally Posted by hankster

snuffle, hiding at the top of the linen closet sounds like something out of Anne Frank's diary. cptsd IS a thousand little cuts. Little acts of meanness and neglect, every day, wear you down, just as little acts of support and kindness, every day, I read once, created geniuses like Mozart and woolf. But then there's Beethoven - not a very happy childhood, so... we still have a chance for greatness.

I didn't have a chamber pot in the the linen closet. I wish I'd thought of that.

When I read "neglect" in your post, something in me said, "I wish." Both parents were soooo intrusive and in your face that being ignored felt like a blessing. But I take your point about the chinese water torture of abuse gradually driving one mad. If there is one word to describe the dysfunction in my family, it is "relentless."

I think at this point in my life, I would define "greatness" as generally feeling content and kinda liking myself. Maybe I'll just keep lowering the bar as I age until I can finally get over it and scream, "Success!"

[Sannah]

Originally Posted by Snuffleupagus

the chaos and continual air of intimidation and tension in my FOO growing up which was punctuated by at least weekly fights that always verged on violence and occasionally teetered over. I talked about how much terror I felt as a kid, my dad's obsession with the house being perfectly clean, how I hid to stay out of the cross fire. She said the regular threats of violence and the systematic degradation that dad inflicted on everyone else made it an environment of domestic violence.

This would give me PTSD. I think of our nervous system development a lot. Just think of how your nervous system developed in this environment.

[sarahplainandshort]

But, seriously, I don't know how to get past the compulsive minimization that's getting in the way of my acceptance of seeing this in myself. I do trust my T's instincts, and seeing many of my problems as the result of ptsd has a ring of truth to it. But I vacillate between that attitude and just thinking, "No way! That can't be true. It seemed so normal at the time. "

Yeah, this was me for a long time. After a lot of reading on the subject of dysfuntional families (I know, we're all dysfunctional families, right???), I feel like I understand how damaging this kind of abuse can be. Yes, there was physical abuse in my family, though honestly I witnessed more than I directly experienced, but that's damaging, too. There was much more emotional and verbal abuse, and physical and emotional neglect, though, and it was very very hard for me to accept the fact that it really was abuse. My T calls it soul murder--I think that's actually the title of a book about neglect and abuse--because the long-term damage to the child is just as devastating as physical violence, but it's invisible. And in a way that makes it even harder.