Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
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I'm not a fan of spring...never was. Maybe this is less OT than I thought. Summer meant days at home all day long without a break from my mother. Honestly...I don't want to think about it. I HATE thinking about it. I hate rehashing it. My mother was never going to change (and believe me or not...why do so many people not believe that I tried?)...in any case, I tried.
Oh but people would believe me eventually, IF they got close enough to my mother. She'd one day turn a SMALL part of what I got daily on them. Then those people would be out the door.
School was bad (I was pretty much THE bully target), but at least it was a break from home.
Summer...was like hearing about other kid's birthdays. How great they were. What fun stuff they were going to do. The great job that someone was going to get. Vacations. Or maybe just "doing nothing". Hanging out with friends. (My mother drove away what few friends I ever did have over to my house. Or would spend 2 hours telling them what was wrong with me.)
For me, summer was all day long in a house. We lived too far to walk any place other than the local elementary school playground. Not terribly close to anything that I could bike to either, not that it mattered, because I was forbidden to bike on the main roads, which meant...I was going nowhere.
Books were my only escape (and still probably are.)
I always HATE saying that I'm hurting. At school that was an opening for attacks. At home...proof on how I was WRONG. Everything about me wrong. The things that give me comfort the rest of the time...well those are especially WRONG. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
So that's it. No dramatic story of physical abuse. Just unrelenting psychological. I remember hearing once about a lab experiment about shocking dogs. How if they weren't allowed to get away, eventually they'd "stop trying". Sounds like a horrible experiment? Not to me...sounded like the first connection to my life. Dogs had learned to go within themselves...just like me. Researchers just didn't get it.
Thanks Beartha.
My mother could...what do you say about someone that could hold it against me for years over using too many paper towels? I mean it was clearly proof that I didn't care about money, didn't care about her. Or wrapping paper...don't get her started on that...because it's not hours, it's 10's of hours. This is crazy making stuff that even frugal people didn't get worked up over. And growing up...it was all MY fault. My father used a paper towel...and I was to blame. And she knew...trust me...she knew. She was the circus trainer that walked around after the animals had sh*t and cleaned it up.
Talking to others...she just left those details out. And talked about how wasteful I was....everyone agreed.
And pain is pain is pain, your hurt is just as painful as anyone else's no matter what the cause.
I am glad you posted and let us give you some support because you always reply on posts.
Triple hugs of support. xox
Have you used it? It sounds a lot like DS...do they have a privacy policy?
i'm so sorry this happened to you, and that she took out every single possible hint of a positive for you by going ahead, into school, into anywhere that might have been a tiny haven when you might have found a place of comfort.
it has got to be more painful than anyone can imagine to feel the way you were made to feel. to feel like you didn't try when all that you did was try and try harder and more.
i have endured and survived a lot of psychological torture, some of it a lot like what you have described. some of what traumatised me/injured me and gave cptsd was carried out over yrs and yrs and was used against me with other family members to take apart my self esteem and keep it taken down.
she made friends with anyone who seemed to be a friend to me and systematically took them away. she would become ''friends' with any of our (her kids) friends, until they saw the real her, as everyone eventually did.
she did the same thing with the people at school. i used to get called into the office and lectured about helping my 'poor mother' - how could my older brother be 'putting her though all this' - i was supposed to have answers to the questions.
TW
i didn't have answers to those or any other questions. i was still stuttering which started in the third grade i think. when they started calling me into the office with the questions, i had been hiding all the sharp silverware for years, already. so my brother wouldn't kill my dad when he got home all scary.
my littler me has so much empathy with your littler you and our nows. i also don't compare us.
we have had different shoes we walked in. i don't assume your pain is the same as my pain. i can't assume that. how could i possibly know that? i had this sister who was sort of like my mother. she didn't like me but she took care of me when she was old enough. so i sort of had her then.
i care; i'm so sorry you were hurt this way.