[granite1]

so yeasterday my T said the mother was sadistic

so I don't know what came over me yesterday but believe it or not I did most of the talking in T . I know !!! that never happens at all. I think taking the Xanax before helps. she asked how my kitties are doing (I swear she reads here to figure out what to ask me) anyway I told her that I was worried about them and that my husband said I was being unreasonable and that they were eating and fine . I was upset for days about this. she said that if I was focusing on something so strongly maybe it was a way to avoid dealing with something that has been upsetting me. I told her my husband has been annoying me with the stuff around the cats. she asked me if there was anything else I think so I told her he was the reason I had a horrible time in Las Vegas. she looked concerned and asked what was going on. I thought it was nice that she seemed to genuinely want to know. I don't usually feel like that from her.

I told her about how he just kept disappearing on me when we would go some place .and it would freak me out some. and even after I told him it was freaking me out he still did it .so I got it in my head he was doing it to me in purpose. the straw that broke the camels back was when we were watching a street fight between like 4 people and I turned around to say something to him and alas he was gone again .I completely freaked when I kept looking around for him and couldn't see him about 5 min later he showed up like nothing had been wrong. I freaked all over him and went back to the hotel room and did not leave that casino for the rest of the trip. it was the Tropicana so it was small and perfect I needed to go no place else.

after that I explained to my T that one of the games the mother would play is when we were in a store she would hide on me when she had the chance. it would send me into a complete out of control panic . I already knew she hated me and I truly believed she just left me there. I would run around the store screaming and crying and any time anyone would try to talk to me I would freak more . I wouldn't let them near me (I hated people still do). eventually the mother would show up laughing saying I need to pay better attention to what they were doing so I wouldn't get lost . if I didn't stop crying immediately she would dig her nails into my arm and say the longer you cry the more ill do this. I also told her about how my husband took me to the Worchester science museum and I saw this train station there and remembered how the mother had left me stuck behind the gate that I didn't know how to get out of saying they didn't want to go on the train and that now I had to stay there alone until they got back. I freaked and they walked a little bit away out of my sight and then came back and got me.

I don't remember a lot of what she said .I know it was not much because this day I had done most of the talking (I know I will hate myself for this) she tried to remind me that my husband probably would not do something like that to upset me .at most it might have been a joke or him being playful. it did not feel that way to me and I told her so. I think her response was that what the mother did to me was sadistic .I remember her saying that to me because it totally shocked me. she said that is not normal at all. she said I was young and that mothers don't do things like that . again she said that is not normal. I was fixated on the word sadistic ,I didn't like her saying that. and as usual I came to the mothers defense. saying she was probably trying to teach me a lesion.

on thing I realized today is that when I talk to T about these situations I can see myself screaming .I can hear it ,and feel it for days. but thinking in general about my past I was not like that at all. I never screamed ,I never cried or talked to people . i would get punished if i did. like finger nails in my arm. would the mother do that and say that if i was not screaming ,crying and creating a scene ?? it confuses me . i don't want to lie to my T . anyway it is getting to much can i please write more about my session later. thanks for reading.

Ah, Granite! You are amazing. Good for you for talking and getting all this out there.

On the screaming/not screaming thing -- I can often sort of 'see' and 'hear' myself screaming when I remember certain things happening to me. The reality is that I rarely screamed (according to the rest of my family). My sister said I kind of half-yelled, half-grunted sometimes when I littler, but not loudly. My mom laughs about how she taught me not to scream SO WELL that when I was around five and the passenger door to the car she was driving popped open and I fell half way out and was only holding on to the moving door by my fingertips, I still didn't scream.

Screaming was not allowed and, as in your family, was severely punished. NOT screaming was a very well conditioned response, but I think that in my head, I was terrified and/or screaming in agony a lot of times. It is what was happening in my head that flashes back for me now. Does that make sense? It is the only thing I can think of that makes sense of the reality that I did not scream, and how vividly I can hear and feel myself screaming when I think of those things happening.

PS. I also think your mother was sadistic, for what it's worth.

[purple orchid]

Hi granite1, it sounds like you had a useful session.
Thanks for sharing.
Well done on talking, keep it up...

Granite... You are truely doing lots of good work in therapy!!!

[stopdog]

The second therapist I see has said the same thing about my mother. I still don't think it is true. My mother would do the same sort of thing about hiding from me and then blaming me and mocking me for getting upset because she was only playing and other things like that. She used to give child rearing advice about how it only took her a couple of whippings to teach me not to get cry or fuss over some things when I was quite young.
I think I was probably just overly sensitive.
But I understand the difficulty in hearing the therapist say such things about a parent.

[caseygirl]

My session yesterday was mostly about my mother and it truly confirmed that she was spiteful and toxic.

[CantExplain]

Hi Granite!

You're doing really good work and making most excellent progress!

[hannabee]

As a mother myself, that truly mortifies me! No mother should treat a child like that. If you have not already done so, I hope you find the courage to remove her from your life. Hugs and good thoughts going your way!

[granite1]

i remember telling her about how i tried to remember ware the door is or ware the car would be so when i lost the mother i could get home. she said there was no way i could do this. NO *****. for the longest time i felt horrible because i could never do this an i always seemed to loose the mother and everyone else. i wouldn't let anyone help me. i feel sl stupid when i panic big time now like i did in las vegas . my T says that i need to tell my husband what happened with the mother. that he needs to stop doing this because it is causing me to have a flashback , i cringed at her words. i don't ever look at myself as having a flash back. i think about flash backs as like someone in war thinking they are still at war. or when i was in one of the residential homes a girl i did not trust or like would sometimes walk around like a zombie saying she was having a flash back . at the time i didn't even know what that was but i knew whatever she was doing was BS and the employees would for the most part ignore her when she did this . i don't ever want to be looked at like that. i was not thinking i was back then or anything when i was freaking in las vegas . but i will admit that i was not able to think clearly and i was hugely panicked. unable to function very well. but i knew i was in las vegas and i think in some way that made things worse.

i would never tell my husband what was going on and why . i did tell him it freaked me out but that was it . it isn't his problem and it seemed as soon as i told him it freaked me out he did it more. i am so humiliated for having this happen already and i had a hard enough time telling my T who i only have to look at once a week . to have to look at my husband every day knowing he has this info is way to much. it is horrible and humiliating to be this way . the mother hiding on me in a store is hardly a trauma and i am just weak to react like this to stupid things

My T calls them "emotional flashbacks" where the emotion seems so real and is triggered by the past event. I get slammed back into the full blown emotional response even where I cannot connect it to a memory.

Getting lost in a store is traumatic for any child...but to have a parent purposely lose you is 100 times worse....

[ShrinkPatient]

I can't imagine a mother doing that!!! When my youngest son was 5, he got lost from us in MGM studios at Disney World. I totally freaked out and was scared to death someone had taken him when I wasn't looking. I can't imagine a mother who would purposely lose their child in a public place.i seriously had authorities to shut the park down within 10 mins of losing him.
Sorry you had to endure that. Why have our mothers done all these terrible things to us. It's no wonder we need therapy...great job talking openly with your T.
:hug

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[WikidPissah]

(((chickie)))
Good job talking about it. You are so amazing.

I like what MKAC said about emotional flashbacks...it's like a trigger almost, your body re-reacts to something similar that happened along time ago.

Flashbacks aren't wrong though...yea, some people abuse the term, but I don't think you have to worry about that.

I often hear "echos" from the past. It scares the s hit out of me sometime.

Your mother was sadistic. She was evil to you. You didn't deserve it.

[CantExplain]

Originally Posted by granite1

i would never tell my husband what was going on and why . i did tell him it freaked me out but that was it . it isn't his problem and it seemed as soon as i told him it freaked me out he did it more. i am so humiliated for having this happen already and i had a hard enough time telling my T who i only have to look at once a week . to have to look at my husband every day knowing he has this info is way to much. it is horrible and humiliating to be this way . the mother hiding on me in a store is hardly a trauma and i am just weak to react like this to stupid things

((Granite))

I don't know your H, so I don't know what he is like. But in your position I would expect him to be supportive. If H won't support you through an illness (and that's what this is), he's not much of a husband.

I'm sorry you were made ashamed of your condition.

[CantExplain]

It's not just war veterans who get flashbacks.

What you suffered as a child is as bad as most people's experience of war. Also, soldiers are older and don't have to face it alone. Finally, soldiers are allowed to shoot back!

[Arha]

Originally Posted by granite1

... the mother hiding on me in a store is hardly a trauma and i am just weak to react like this to stupid things

Hi Granite,
Firstly, I just want to say that I really understand where you are coming from. I have had to learn that my reacting so strongly to what I think are "just little things" is because to a child, they aren't, especially when done by the person who is your source of support.

A mother may not be very supportive, but as a child that is who you look to for everything. For a mother to treat you like she did is to take away everything that you rely on. Mothers really are the world to young children.
It isn't just a simple thing, it is huge. It is very scary and devastating, and for it to happen over and over again meant you were never knowing who you could trust.
What makes it even worse is that she then, as the adult, turned it around so you, the child, were the one at fault. You were not in control of the situation, but were blamed for it.
And then, to make it worse again, she laughed at your fears. You could not be expected as a child, dependent on her, to be in charge, especially in a new and scary place. Big stores and similar places are huge and bewildering to children. So instead of comfort, from the person you depended upon, you were rejected and found wanting.
For this to happen repeatedly and unpredictably would have left you very, very scared of what could happen, desperately trying not to cause it, when you didn't, so no matter what you did, you would fail, and also blaming yourself if things went wrong, because the adult blamed you, and adults are right.

So it is not a small thing.
It is not your fault.
It is a real significant trauma and it is possible to have flashbacks, and during these you will be as scared as you have learned to be, which is very, very scared.

[Favorite Jeans]

When we are little we think that the way our parents do things is normal, standard and right. If you feel scared when your mother hides from you in a store the problem is that you're too sensitive because the parent is always right. Even as you get older this belief that the problem is in you persists at some level. I think that's why talking about trauma from our families of origin can feel so transgressive, like you're this traitor or this squealy little tattletale with no sense of humor and your parents were just being regular people. You kind of know your mother was mean and abusive yet you're not yet fully able to believe that what she did was horrible and that you were innocent.

Today my T reflected to me that it was hard for me that I never had my parents' permission to just be who I am (paraphrasing a lot). And I said to her "you might as well tell me that it was hard for me that I didn't grow up in a mansion with an indoor pool and a butler and a pony in the backyard..." Because to me, how I grew up was normal and lamenting that I didn't have more acceptance is like a kind of greed or just silliness. "Oh poor me, I didn't even have a private jet!"

It takes a while to really believe that you deserved better, that in fact regular parents don't play sadistic games with their kids, that the sort of experience you described most definitely constitutes trauma and that it makes sense that it would leave you with flashbacks. And until then words like abuse or sadistic might seem at once extremely validating ("I'm not crazy, that was an unconscionable thing to do to a child") and extremely jarring and threatening ("OMG I'm SUCH a drama queen, she was just playing. Come on, really, 'sadistic' don't you think that's a bit extreme?").

[velcro003]

sadistic is the perfect word for your mother, granite.

[nycgal448]

Originally Posted by caseygirl

My session yesterday was mostly about my mother and it truly confirmed that she was spiteful and toxic.

My psychs hate my mom. she is very emotionally abusive. she is my main
triggers for my burning. thx
for listenin.

[Onyx999]

So sorry about your experiences. I too had a toxic mother. she is still alive. I refer to her as the biological birth-giver. she truly has never been a real "mother." that title is earned, not automatically bestowed because you popped out a kid just like some animal in a field somewhere.

There needs to be a law about who can have kids and who can't.

[rainbow8]

granite, I wanted to post sooner but it wasn't my "day" to do so. For so long you didn't talk in therapy because there is so much inside of you that is too horrible to face, like "the mother" and how she treated you. It makes sense that you want to shut it all out, but that's the "old granite's" method. You are doing incredible work in therapy, and I have so much admiration for you. Just take it slowly, and tell your T as many feelings as you can, including how you feel about the words she uses to describe your mother. It's all part of the healing process.