[Amazonmom]

Really? Nobody hit me. Nobody molested/raped me. I always had enough to eat and a roof over my head. I had clothes and a car, went to a nice college.

My T told me that she reviewed her notes from the last year with me and she sees a picture of someone who suffered severe abusive neglect of emotional and sometimes physical needs. She was visibly angry when I told her about how it was my role in the family to keep my mother happy, to be her best friend. That I existed only to carry out my parents' unfulfilled wishes for their own lives. That when I was ill they would only take me to the doctor when they felt like it. I am skipping a lot of events, it would take too long to explain.

My T actually had tears in her eyes when I told her about when I was suicidal and locked myself in my dorm room because I was scared that I would jump in front of a car or jump off a bridge if I left. I had wanted to call for help but I knew that my parents would have complained about me running up a huge medical bill and told me that I wasn't depressed and why was I bothering people with that nonsense. I ended up manic after the stress of spending days being suicidal locked in a room. All my mother had to say was "you sound better, I told you that you weren't depressed". (why did all my friends ask if I had been using cocaine then...oh because being MANIC is not normal...)

I never thought of their lifelong negation of my needs or wants as being abuse. I just figured my job in life was to make others happy and if they are angry they won't love me. When my T asked me to write a letter introducing people to who I am, I couldn't write one. I don't have a sense of who I am.

I want to know who I am. How do I escape lifelong programming that I don't exist apart from others' needs?

[Evening]

A lot of people think that abuse is only severe if it's something physical, i.e. sexual abuse or being beaten. My worst abuser never laid a finger on me. He was verbally and mentally abusive, and nobody paid any real attention because he'd never done anything physical. I remember being in therapy and my grandmother had said to my therapist 'I m just worried he is doing something sexual to her'. Oh what, so it had to get to that point before anybody attempted to actually help? I haven't seen him in 5 years and I am still suffering from him.

Then there is my mother, it never even occurred to me that she had abused and neglected me until those words actually came out of her mouth. Looking back, she abused and neglected me severely, I was just so used to it that I never knew.

There is more to abuse that being beaten or molested, in my mind there is no worse abuse over the other, it's how the abused manages to cope afterwards. Physical wounds will heal, but the trauma, whether it was physical, mental, verbal or sexual, can last an entire lifetime and really shape a person.

[lynn P.]

(((Amazonmom)))

Originally Posted by Amazonmom

Really? Nobody hit me. Nobody molested/raped me. I always had enough to eat and a roof over my head. I had clothes and a car, went to a nice college.
...
How do I escape lifelong programming that I don't exist apart from others' needs?

It is only very recently that the devastation caused by emotional abuse and neglect has come into focus even for psychologists and the like. I know it is very hard for me to hold on to that idea that I was badly hurt, even though I was rarely actually hit
As for how to escape the programming, I think the fact that you are in therapy is a huge first step. It means that you matter enough to yourself to get help. Beyond that, in my experience it seems to be along slow process of unlearning all the lessons our abusers (I still have trouble even using that word.) taught us, with the help of whatever supportive people we can find.
At one point I did find it helpful to declare a personal moratorium on being helpful. I didn't necessarily neglect anyone, but I at least waited until I was asked, rather than rushing in beforehand And I paused to at least allow the possibility of saying no before I said yes. It was actually a hugely challenging thing to do, but I learned a lot and hopefully changed a bit as a result.
I know it is extremely painful when these things first come to awareness, so I encourage you to be gentle with yourself, and not pressure yourself to hurry up and change.

[Rapunzel]

I have always been interested in trauma and coping, so I went to a seminar recently on trauma and complex PTSD. I didn't really hear anything new there, that I hadn't heard before, but felt validated because the focus of the entire seminar was mostly about emotional neglect, and its effects. Abuse is doing something (physically or emotionally) to someone that causes harm. Neglect is withholding something (physically or emotionally) that is necessary for that person's development or well-being. Physical abuse hurts, and is much easier to recognize, define, intervene, and treat, because you can see the damage. It is much easier and convincing to know that this happened and was wrong.

Emotional neglect harms the development of who you are, your sense of self, your ability to recognize your own needs and get what you need. It destroys trust. One of my therapists observed, "they took away your personality." It is very damaging, and hard to heal from because it is so much harder to see (no wonder some of us injure ourselves - creating a wound that can be seen). Especially when it was constant, and you never knew anything different. Treatment is long-term.

I think that one of the most infuriating things about it is how hard it is to get any support, help, or even recognition that there is a problem. I had medical needs neglected too. Once I had strep throat, and had a very high fever and I was out of it for three days. I was 10 years old. When I woke up, I didn't have enough energy to do more than wonder if it was day or night before I went back under. The next thing I remember was telling my mother as we were finally going to the doctor, that I finally knew what was going on around me again, after knowing nothing for a long time. She said it was just because she gave me tylenol so that she could get me to the doctor. Why didn't she give me tylenol three days earlier?

As a teenager, I broke my ankle once, and couldn't walk on it, and it took me a whole day to convince mom to take me to a doctor. She said she didn't have time and it was too much trouble to be worth it.

They didn't even notice when I was not eating for days at a time, when I was doing it mostly to see if anybody cared.

But what I remember hurting the most was when I tried to tell anyone outside the family that something wasn't right, and I wasn't happy. I was immediately shut down, and they made sure that everyone knew I was just wrong and selfish and ungrateful, and anything I said was just made up to try to get attention. (Attention is a legitimate need - one that was neglected).

How do you escape lifelong programming that you exist only to meet other people's needs? It doesn't happen overnight. You have to learn that you have needs too, and what you need, and that you are a unique person with an identity of your own, and that you can express who you are. You need a safe place to do the developing that wasn't allowed to you before. It takes time.

[Typo]

I never thought of their lifelong negation of my needs or wants as being abuse. I just figured my job in life was to make others happy and if they are angry they won't love me. When my T asked me to write a letter introducing people to who I am, I couldn't write one. I don't have a sense of who I am.

Amazonmom, this resonnates so well with me, I actually cried a little when I read it, you summed up so well what I feel and have felt for most of my life.
What your parents did to you is emotional abuse, I too suffer from a great deal of emotional abuse issues, and I still live at home with my parents, mine is diffrent in that, I was at a young age looked to fix their problems, and have and still continue to be taken advantage of and I feel like excatly as you said from what I qouted in your post.

I don't know what to tell you, excpet you can beat that life long programming, it takes time, a lot of time, but you can do it, you are such a strong person and I know you can beat it, working with T, journaling, doing things to break that training that we are only here to make other's happy, are all ways to help beat it.

Feel free to pm anytime hun

Best wishes and many peaceful thoughts
Typo

[englishteacher]

I've been dealing with the same issues for over 20 years now. Like you, I never thought of myself as abused or neglected. My physical needs were met, but my emotional needs were not. My father to this day says that I am a selfish, ungrateful child who always blames others for my own deficiencies and mistakes. Sometimes, I feel like I am indeed what he says, but other times, I just feel sad for him that he can't or won't see how much pain he has inflicted by calling me names and believing that I was not good enough. I stopped talking to him at all 6 months ago. I changed my number and I'm about to move. It's painful to let go, and I'm not suggesting that you cut yourself off from your parents, but perhaps if you distanced yourself from them for a while, you could find the space to discover who you really are inside...?

I don't have anything to add but my support. You already know that you were abused, even if it wasn't physical or sexual. The root of most abuse is that role switch--child taking care of parents, instead of the other way around like it's supposed to be.

I was invisible too. Reports of being bullied at school--I was actually followed home and hit with a chain at every step--were met with "Don't let it bother you. Just ignore them." Translation: "Don't bother me with it. I'm ignoring you." And sometimes to this day a family member might ask me why I'm doing such-and-such with my left hand. Duh. I'm left-handed! But I'm so invisible, they aren't aware of that.

I too went days without eating, and nobody noticed. Most embarrassing (almost too embarrassed to type this) I used to wet my bed, and nobody was aware of that. Sheets were washed on Saturday anyway, so I'd just sleep in it all week and wash my sheets then. How nobody ever noticed the smell is beyond me.

One day I broke my right collarbone at school. It was close to the end of the day, so rather than calling my mother, the school sent me home as usual on the bus. When I got home, my mother was napping on the couch, and for hours I was afraid to wake her. We'd been thoroughly taught the consequences, should we disturb mother's nap! Well, finally, I was in so much pain that I did wake her, over the protests of my siblings. It actually surprised me that my mother wasn't angry, and that she took me to the ER right away.

When I later told my grandmother about that fear, she said, "Well, that was your fault, because you should have realized it was emergency enough to wake her up." Just like it was my fault I was molested, because I should have had sense enough to scream.

Honestly, how some people just invalidate.

For someone with nothing to add, I sure blabbered a lot. Sorry.

[Alexandria04]

I have to agree that emotional abuse affects a person just as strongly (if not more so) than physical and sexual abuse. I think that is part of why physical abuse is so hard to work through because it is usually accompanied by emotional abuse. While being hit, slapped around etc. hurts physically (to me) the part that really hurts is that physical abuse translates to a child "I don't love you" and our parents and families are supposed to be the ones that love us unconditionally. So when they don't that is really hard to deal with and work through, especially if you are a young child. So just because you weren't physically or sexually abused does not mean you weren't abused at all, you were just abused in a different way. I hope you find the answers you are looking for and learn to be yourself We are all here to support you!

[googley]

(((((((Amazonmom))))))

I know what you mean about not knowing that it was abuse. I had to have a friend tell me that was what it was. And even then it was hard to believe. I wasn't able to recognize what it was, it was all just my fault. It was what I was used to. I think I had a small sense that things were not what they should have been. But I didn't have the words to describe it. And when I tried to describe it to others I was told to suck it up.

I'm sorry you went through so much pain and torture. I don't know how you get the personality back. I have started with working on being able to say 'no' to people. Being able to say that I can't because I have my own needs that need to be taken care of. I can't always take care of others. That is where I have started. I don't know if that will help you. I used to be unable to say no to requests. Now I am better at it. It is two steps forward one step back.

Take care of yourself.