[ochoa.c]

This might be triggering for some people. It certainly has been for me and it has distorted my dealings with other people.

Possible trigger:

I was abused by my grandmother emotionally and physically since I was almost 7 years old back in El Salvador until the time I came to the United States to live with my parents when I was almost 14 years of age.

Now, I didn't know it was emotional and physical abuse until I was much older and I saw her behavior and I thought back and said "this isn't right". She would beat me and my brothers with whatever object she had at hand -- whether it was a shoe or a tree branch. She also didn't care where she hit us as long as she did hit us.

She also said nasty things about us. That perhaps we deserved to be abandoned by my mother, that it was our fault she left. that she [my grandmother] regretted the day she chose to be our caretaker, and said nasty things about our mom too like she was a ***** and a bad mother. This wasn't the entire gamut of things she did either. Whenever I had normal child crushes on girls she'd shoot it down by saying I was too immature and that I had no business chasing after girls (I was in 2nd grade, mind, a time when kids are being kids; but I had issues growing up without a mother, issues that grew worse with time). In other issues, like personal issues with the fact I had lost my mother, I just got the stereotypical response from her "you're a man, you're not supposed to be weak. Man up". Funny how that works, looking in hindsight.

The worst part? My dad wasn't around us. He came to the United States to make a living. We were threatened by my grandma not to say anything bad about her to my dad, or how she was hitting us and the things she told us, and so we learned how to lie about our feelings and just how scared we were of my grandma. I guess that started my habit of lying about my feelings to others; letting them know things are okay when they really are not. I don't know. The point is that even though we could count on my dad we couldn't say anything until we were safe with him when we came to the states and we told him. The harm was done though, I never knew how to recover from that, given I had no positive female influence in my life and my father and oldest brother were more concerned about us excelling in school, being the perfect children in front of others and at the same time under the implicit threats of my grandmother ultimately never let me recover fully from the damage that was done.

Nowadays? My grandmother lives with my uncle her last days. I don't see her anymore, but I wonder sometimes if I truly forgave her, or if I truly felt anything for her other than familial obligation. I also wonder if my issues as an adult stem in part from the abuse I received from my grandma. Also, I wonder if sometimes I am being just dramatic and I should just take it as part of life; after all, I think sometimes, everyone's life is bad up to a degree and mine isn't bad enough to warrant me putting myself out there and seek help. Sometimes I truly think that, and I battle with it every day thinking that perhaps I shouldn seek help, but I am too scared for the fear of reprisal because of the fact I have always been assumed to be strong and have a thick skin, but in the inside I am dying for someone to hear me and help me out. I just never learned or knew how to ask for help.

[Crazy Hitch]

Hi ochoa.c

Thank you very much for sharing your story with us.

It take a great deal of courage to do this and I just wanted to acknowledge this for you.

[dandylin]

Sounds like she resented having to care for you. No excuse for what she did and the threats she made, made it much more a burden for you to carry. I wish you peace

you are very brave for sharing.

[RedEagle]

Doesn't sound particularly abusive to me. A lot of parents hit their kids. I got hit, so did my sisters. Did she say mean things a couple of times and that's it? Maybe she was just a mean old woman, some people can be like that.

Abusers do very specific things in how they treat you. An abuser's goal is to systematically break you down, weaken you, make you more dependent on them and turn you into a more pliable victim because they are attempting to gain something from you that they lack within themselves. It's a very complex, effective and insidious process.

A normal, healthy parent would behave in a way that assisted your maturation and development. An abusive parent, who isn't really a parent at all, would do the opposite. An abusive parent encourages over-dependence and intentionally stifles maturation because they are only interested in exploiting you for their own selfish purposes. The more mature and strong you become the harder it is to easily victimize you. Once you are broken and depleted, when you're at your most vulnerable state, then you will be discarded and all of the blame will go along with you. It's the same concept as wringing out a rag and then throwing it in the garbage. This type of situation is not simply "a part of life", it's an abhorrent tragedy which befalls many innocent children who probably end up very bewildered about the whole thing. It's not as if once the process is over someone shows up to finally tell you what's been happening. You may find out just by happenstance one day many years later like I did long after it's too late to do anything about it.

[ochoa.c]

Originally Posted by RedEagle

Doesn't sound particularly abusive to me. A lot of parents hit their kids. I got hit, so did my sisters. Did she say mean things a couple of times and that's it? Maybe she was just a mean old woman, some people can be like that.

Abusers do very specific things in how they treat you. An abuser's goal is to systematically break you down, weaken you, make you more dependent on them and turn you into a more pliable victim because they are attempting to gain something from you that they lack within themselves. It's a very complex, effective and insidious process.

A normal, healthy parent would behave in a way that assisted your maturation and development. An abusive parent, who isn't really a parent at all, would do the opposite. An abusive parent encourages over-dependence and intentionally stifles maturation because they are only interested in exploiting you for their own selfish purposes. The more mature and strong you become the harder it is to easily victimize you. Once you are broken and depleted, when you're at your most vulnerable state, then you will be discarded and all of the blame will go along with you. It's the same concept as wringing out a rag and then throwing it in the garbage. This type of situation is not simply "a part of life". It's an abhorrent tragedy which befalls many innocent children who probably end up very bewildered about the whole thing. It's not as if once the process is over someone shows up to finally tell you what's been happening. You may find out just by happenstance one day many years later like I did long after it's too late to do anything about it.

I feel that hitting a child is abusive from my experience with my grandmother. My dad? Yes, you can say he was abusive or not, as he hit me but he never did it in anger, or with whatever he had in his hands like a switch or a shoe and never caring where he hit, but more to keep consistency. He did it in a controlled manner, to make me feel hurt with my feelings, but not to leave bruises or just do it nilly-willy in any part of my body. I had two methods of corporeal punishment, and I don't believe that my grandmother was right in hitting us the way she did in retrospective and in the way she treated us.

No, she never just said things like that a couple of times and that was that. It was constant. In the 7 years I spent with her those are the phrases I remember most out of all she ever said to me and my siblings. I don't think a child who has a well adjusted or healthy parent remembers the negatives about their experience with them. I remember far more loving memories of my father even though he was strict and was present one or two months of the year during those years at home than I do of my grandmother.

Yes, a normal healthy parent will assist you in your development, I understand that from whatever little studies I have done and speaking with other parents. However, abuse doesn't just manifest itself into dependency. I learned through revisiting those years that it can also manifest itself into neglect or even rejection of a child. Like I said, looking back at it I realized nothing of what I had experienced back then was right because that's not what love is, that's not how you demonstrate to someone you love them. It sounds to me like signs of abuse or abusive behavior from my grandmother. Even if she didn't try to break me down systematically she engaged, for reasons I cannot yet understand, in abusive behaviors which ended up hurting me and my siblings. The fact she was a mean old woman doesn't mean that gives her any justification -- let alone rights -- to have told children that their mother was worthless in front of them who just got abandoned by their mother or any of the other things she said. To me, that's abusive, now that I look back at it. Regardless of whether she was a mean old woman or not.

Being a victim of abuse, I've learned, doesn't just involve they making you dependent upon them. It can take many forms, and many parents who abuse their children mean no harm in their actions. Yet they are abusive. The fact that they are not trying to make you dependent upon them and feel the abusive behaviors are done in your own self-interest doesn't precisely mean they are not abusive.

I just feel that way because I grew up being put into my head that I was privileged I even had a family and that my grandmother was just not right in her head and that I should forgive her and that life is life. However, I don't think that somehow that sounds right; and honestly is something I've been trying to change my perspective about to begin to understand what went wrong.

The fact is that abuse is not something we can point out and say "well THIS isn't abuse and THIS, this right here, is abusive behavior" as it can take many shapes and forms. Mine perhaps just took a more ambiguous shape than the norm.

I also don't feel I became particularly strong from the experience. If anything I feel I became more detached and more self-absorbed to prevent getting hurt from her words. I keep people at arm's length to not get hurt. That's not "healthy" development when you feel so insecure about others it cripples how open you can be to them or how much you can trust them. Being mature and strong implies to me different things than keeping people at arms' length and feel like you can't trust anyone, which is the behavior I most often take with new individuals and I more often than not test them to see if they won't hurt me.

[RedEagle]

Originally Posted by ochoa.c

I feel that hitting a child is abusive from my experience with my grandmother. My dad? Yes, you can say he was abusive or not, as he hit me but he never did it in anger, or with whatever he had in his hands like a switch or a shoe and never caring where he hit, but more to keep consistency. He did it in a controlled manner, to make me feel hurt with my feelings, but not to leave bruises or just do it nilly-willy in any part of my body. I had two methods of corporeal punishment, and I don't believe that my grandmother was right in hitting us the way she did in retrospective and in the way she treated us.

No, she never just said things like that a couple of times and that was that. It was constant. In the 7 years I spent with her those are the phrases I remember most out of all she ever said to me and my siblings. I don't think a child who has a well adjusted or healthy parent remembers the negatives about their experience with them. I remember far more loving memories of my father even though he was strict and was present one or two months of the year during those years at home than I do of my grandmother.

Yes, a normal healthy parent will assist you in your development, I understand that from whatever little studies I have done and speaking with other parents. However, abuse doesn't just manifest itself into dependency. I learned through revisiting those years that it can also manifest itself into neglect or even rejection of a child. Like I said, looking back at it I realized nothing of what I had experienced back then was right because that's not what love is, that's not how you demonstrate to someone you love them. It sounds to me like signs of abuse or abusive behavior from my grandmother. Even if she didn't try to break me down systematically she engaged in abusive behaviors which, for whatever reason, ended up hurting me and my siblings. The fact she was a mean old woman doesn't mean that gives her any justification -- let alone rights -- to have told children that their mother was worthless in front of them who just got abandoned by their mother. To me, that's abusive, now that I look back at it. Regardless of whether she was a mean old woman or not.

Being a victim of abuse, I've learned, doesn't just involve they making you dependent upon them. It can take many forms, and many parents who abuse their children mean no harm in their actions. Yet they are abusive. The fact that they are not trying to make you dependent upon them and feel the abusive behaviors are done in your own self-interest doesn't precisely mean they are not abusive.

I just feel that way because I grew up being put into my head that I was privileged I even had a family and that my grandmother was just not right in her head and that I should forgive her and that life is life. However, I don't think that somehow that sounds right; and honestly is something I've been trying to change my perspective about to begin to understand what went wrong.

The fact is that abuse is not something we can point out and say "well THIS isn't abuse and THIS, this right here, is abusive behavior" as it can take many shapes and forms. Mine just took a more ambiguous shape than the norm.

I also don't feel I became particularly strong from the experience. If anything I feel I became more detached and more self-absorbed to prevent getting hurt from her words. I keep people at arm's length to not get hurt. That's not "healthy" development when you feel so insecure about others it cripples how open you can be to them or how much you can trust them. Being mature and strong implies to me different things than keeping people at arms' length and feel like you can't trust anyone, which is the behavior I most often take with new individuals and I more often than not test them to see if they won't hurt me.

Nothing wrong with keeping people at arm's length, or further if necessary. Once you've been stung bad it's only natural to develop methods to protect yourself. Keeping people at a safe distance is vital imo, unless you want to risk re-living traumatic experiences over and over again for your whole life.

[ochoa.c]

Originally Posted by RedEagle

Nothing wrong with keeping people at arm's length, or further if necessary. Once you've been stung bad it's only natural to develop methods to protect yourself. Keeping people at a safe distance is vital imo, unless you want to risk re-living traumatic experiences over and over again for your whole life.

When it becomes a crippling fear of getting hurt, it is. Being stung doesn't mean I have to develop methods and traps to protect myself.

Yes, keeping some people at a safe distance can be a good thing, but when people have fears of getting hurt that it cripples their interpersonal relationships to the point of sabotaging them that's not healthy, that's just living with the fear that just because your bad experiences were bad you have to expect your future experiences with people to be bad, which is the sort of mentality I approach others.

I don't want to relive my traumatic experiences, but I also feel that there's something wrong with me because of my behaviors towards others if I am so cripplingly terrified of even asking for help when I need it or fear rejection and judgement so much it keeps me from developing new relationships in a healthy manner.

[Dog on a Tree]

I'm so sorry to read about what has happened to you. You deserve help. Your not being weak about it, etc. It's the opposite, your being strong, you have introspection of yourself and that's good. If being strong and if being a man means putting up with stuff, etc then I would rather remain a child all my life.

Help yourself before something breaks inside of you.

[Fuzzybear]