A Child Abuse Survivors Group Community Group
We survived child abuse, but the pain still remains and so do the other effects which can last a lifetime. We are often unable to find adequate help, and we are seeking answers that can help us understand what happened so that we can go on to lead normal lives. (Please note that this is a group for child abuse survivors only. If you are a professional in the mental health...
It takes eighteen years or sometimes a little longer, to raise a human child. That's longer than for any other kind of creature in the world. The reason is because there is so much that a child needs to learn about. What to eat, how much to eat, how often to eat. How to talk, what to say, who to speak to, when to speak, how to listen. What to do with all those arms and legs and opposable thumbs - that's a lot of complicated machinery to master. Different kinds of relationships: friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, enemies, brothers, sisters, cousins, grandparents, schoolmates, neighbors, strangers, stranger danger, . . . How to sit still, when to walk, and when to run. How to hold things, how to catch and throw things, how to pick things up, and how to hand things over. How to read, how to write, and how to study and learn. Who to trust, how to regulate emotions, and how to clean. How to use a telephone, how to use a computer, how to cross the street safely, and how to swim. How to cook, how to take a shower or bath, how to tie shoelaces, and how to button a shirt. How to drive a vehicle, how to use money, and how to tell time. There are roughly a zillion individual skills to acquire for each of us as human beings.
Though we learn a lot in school, we learn even more from our first and probably longest lasting relationships, that with our parents. But what about those of us who had dysfunctional parents, perhaps parents who were largely incapable of teaching us most of the basic skills we should have learned in childhood? If we're lucky, we pick up those skills from someone else, but what if we're not lucky, and don't learn those skills at all or not until we're much further along in years? We might be left with the feeling that we're wandering around in the dark trying to figure out where things are. We make a lot of mistakes, often humiliating ourselves to the point that we may stop trying new things that we desperately need to learn to function in this world. We could end up shy with a bunch of social anxiety if we didn't learn how relationships work and how to communicate from our parents during our childhood. We might end up poor if we didn't learn the basics about money, holding a job, etc., either directly or by example, from our parents.
I'm one of those people who sure could have used parental guidance during my childhood. I'm grown now, but lacking in confidence in just about every area of life. My parents did not give me any kind of teaching or instruction in life. I don't know why or what made them the way they were. They had children, but didn't have the ability to raise them. We lived in social isolation, wearing filthy clothes, not knowing even rudimentary manners. We were starved, beaten, and verbally abused. My mother was severely mentally ill, and my father was always angry, angry, angry at everyone and everything. I knew very little about any relatives I might have had. Did I have cousins, did my parents have brothers and sisters? Don't really know much about that. It would have been nice had relatives stepped in and given me some early guidance on how to be human. I guess my whole family were social outcasts when I was a child. If either of my parents ever had friends, I never saw any evidence of it.
So I do the best I can, making guesses at how to do things, and frequently being wrong.
What about you? Did your parents give you proper guidance? Did they show you by example how to do things?
Though we learn a lot in school, we learn even more from our first and probably longest lasting relationships, that with our parents. But what about those of us who had dysfunctional parents, perhaps parents who were largely incapable of teaching us most of the basic skills we should have learned in childhood? If we're lucky, we pick up those skills from someone else, but what if we're not lucky, and don't learn those skills at all or not until we're much further along in years? We might be left with the feeling that we're wandering around in the dark trying to figure out where things are. We make a lot of mistakes, often humiliating ourselves to the point that we may stop trying new things that we desperately need to learn to function in this world. We could end up shy with a bunch of social anxiety if we didn't learn how relationships work and how to communicate from our parents during our childhood. We might end up poor if we didn't learn the basics about money, holding a job, etc., either directly or by example, from our parents.
I'm one of those people who sure could have used parental guidance during my childhood. I'm grown now, but lacking in confidence in just about every area of life. My parents did not give me any kind of teaching or instruction in life. I don't know why or what made them the way they were. They had children, but didn't have the ability to raise them. We lived in social isolation, wearing filthy clothes, not knowing even rudimentary manners. We were starved, beaten, and verbally abused. My mother was severely mentally ill, and my father was always angry, angry, angry at everyone and everything. I knew very little about any relatives I might have had. Did I have cousins, did my parents have brothers and sisters? Don't really know much about that. It would have been nice had relatives stepped in and given me some early guidance on how to be human. I guess my whole family were social outcasts when I was a child. If either of my parents ever had friends, I never saw any evidence of it.
So I do the best I can, making guesses at how to do things, and frequently being wrong.
What about you? Did your parents give you proper guidance? Did they show you by example how to do things?
Unfortunately, they taught me nothing about getting along with people. My brother and I weren't starved (rather the reverse, being forced to eat whatever they put on our plates), but we were both beaten and verbally abused, treated with contempt, etc. My parents didn't use courtesies at all. They forced us to say please and thank you--with sirs and ma-ams thrown in in the appropriate places--but that was all. I had to learn where to use other things like I'm sorry and excuse me from people at school. Never mind more complicated things. I have no clue what to do in most social situations and have to guess. Needless to say, I frequently guess wrong. There are apparently an infinite number of ways to do things wrong, and only a very few ways to do them right, so trial and error really sucks as a way to learn.
My father taught me to be paranoid. He hit without warning or explanation, and he hit hard. He hid things from me and made me search for them for hours. He destroyed things I cared about, frequently in front of me. He taught me that 99% wasn't good enough for anything, and that any tiny mistake negated all my efforts and made me contemptible and worthless. He used to lie in wait, hoping for some kind of mistake, and there was no place to hide from him. He taught me to be afraid to want anything, because if he saw I wanted something, he'd make sure I didn't get it. I wasn't allowed to express a desire of any kind or have any emotions . . .
My mother . . . I'm still working on that one. She pushed me at him to watch him hurt me. She laughed if I hurt myself. She never wanted me at all, that I can tell, only my brother. She wouldn't even go to my wedding or my college graduation, won't call me, has never been to my house though I've lived here for almost 9 years, never been to the place where I've worked for 12 years. She didn't go to my younger daughter's wedding in October (she had an excuse, but I'm well acquainted with her manufactured excuses) and I finally could take no more and stopped trying. She's ASHAMED OF ME. It's time I faced it, she just doesn't want to be around me at all. I'm mentally ill and that means she wouldn't want me now even if she originally did.
That is just too much. Their treatment made me mentally ill, so now they're ashamed of me. My father hates me passionately because I stopped taking his treatment of me . . . The last thing he said to me was, "Are you still seeing that stupid psychiatrist?"
I'm sorry. I'm ranting. This question really popped the cork.
I find in your posts Beaumont that you seem a lot stronger than you give yourself credit for. These groups are examples. I have some suggestions: maybe consider work exchange activities like retreats that count as work/volunteering and aim to give you some healing time?
This depresses me......
my mom never taught me how to cook or clean that learned that much later in life. i would like to cook fully but not in a hoarded house so i make something easy and quick to eat. i still dont know how to iron shirts that well. well, basic stuff wasnt taught can you believe it at age 27 i have to relearn it? told my therapist how this embarrassing. she suggested i volunteer to gain life experience and my social worker said the same thing.
my parents are narcs so self absorbed into each other's pathetic dramas. they both lie to each other, steal from each other, etc. they have always been arguing over the same shit ever since we were born: money, whores (my dad's mistresses), mom's ignorance, mom's issues with white people, has nothing to show anything (she is 66 yrs old), has no life etc.
"He destroyed things I cared about, frequently in front of me. He taught me that 99% wasn't good enough for anything, and that any tiny mistake negated all my efforts and made me contemptible and worthless."
yep my mom too i would come home shit of mine is either missing or broken yet i was expected to "get over it that's what people do." thats their damn motto still is today lots of people are suppose to hurt you big deal! i wasn't taught about how to relate to people, u know the stuff u say can hurt or offend someone, etc. they talk shit about people (each other) daily always lying we grew up listening to our parents talk shit about people and grin in their faces too. both of them claim they didnt do it well if i was gone all day and u 2 were home how the hell could i have done it? dumbasses its called deductive reasoning lol yet i was always lying but i wasnt home all day how could i break my own stuff again? lol
people ridicule me for not knowing how to do anything. not my fault my parents didnt teach me my therapist asked me why didnt i teach myself growing up? i told her because i wanted a set of parents whose sole job is to teach the children so they already have the tools for adulthood why did i have to teach myself when i was a kid? thats what the other adults in the family is for but wasnt like that in my family.
But--just watch if anyone tries to tell them anything. From the boundaries book I read, I discovered that most adults take it as a boundary violation if someone tells them how to do something. ** Equals don't tell equals what to do. ** If you try, it's like you're putting yourself on a higher level and they won't stand for it. If there's a class in how to do things, you'll get a few, but most people "get their back up" if you even suggest they don't know what they're doing and could use, maybe, a few pointers. Of course, my social skills suck and there may be a way to do it that I haven't figured out yet, but I don't think so. I've tried being direct, being subtle, being totally offhand, leaving books lying around, showing by example --- I haven't found anything yet that would work. I can't even tell my own children things without them getting ticked at me.
I don't take it too kindly if someone tries to tell me what to do, either. I think it's human nature. *sigh* And the problem I have, trying to acquire social skills, is very difficult with no one to actively teach me, but no one, for the most part, will tell me what I'm doing wrong. They just avoid me. Perhaps they expect me to get mad if they do because they're telling me what to do? I am, actually, one of the very few who wouldn't get mad--I'd really appreciate it if someone would quietly and kindly tell me stuff. I used to have a friend who would, but she knew no more than I did, really. It was the blind leading the blind. And books can only get you so far.
There must be a solution, some way of getting the needed knowledge and skills where they need to be, some way that even adults could do without being affronted. This website is a partial solution because we can talk to each other. But it's not enough. For a lot of things, you need hands-on, by-example teaching, someone to watch and give feedback. Is there anything?
what happens with a lot of relationships now? some people just dont talk to each other anymore nobody wants to communicate anymore these days and that is pretty sad. i told them i grew up in my house with no communication my parents are narcs (which they know) always right, sitting down talking about stuff didnt exist in their vocab. if more people would communicate, we wouldn't have a problem.
i was suppose to have my session this morning but that didnt happen i had to reschedule for next monday. i mean i would want communication but hate it when i end up fighting with them even if it is over something small i told my therapist and bf ive been fighting all my life every lil thing does trigger and makes me want to attack someone (some people deserve it).
my therapist and i were gonna practice on social skills for me to relearn. i told her how embarrassing at age 27 to relearn this when i was very outgoing when i was a kid and that got fucked up later on. i bought a book on dysfunctional families for adult children to understand what "normal" is got it dirt cheap too! when you teach people things you learn a lot but my parents never taught me shit. they don't believe in teaching a child should know whats going on i couldn't believe that when i was told from 5-17 yrs of age.
id prefer if someone tells me something nicely about things i need to work on and just not be so impatient with me. all my life i had nothing but impatient assholes working with me and they wonder why i never responded to them they were like totaltarian barbians i hated that.