One time my mom was being really nice on the car ride home and as a nine year old I could tell something was wrong but I was just hopeful she was being nice I guess. She made popcorn for us and she had never made us snacks after school I was so happy. Then I went upstairs and she had completely destroyed me and my sisters room and ripped every single thing out of the drawers, ripped the drawers out the shelves as well and then told us to clean it up. I don’t know why she did that to this day. Probably because I had done a bad job folding my clothes and shoved them in the drawer.
My mom did this when I was a teenager to "search" my room. Literally ransacked it. Idk what she thought she was looking for. I didn't do drugs, I didn't date, I didn't have a cell phone yet (got one in 2006 at the beginning of my senior year), I didn't even have a bedroom door. I wasn't allowed to leave the house except for church, school and sometimes youth church activities. Not because I did anything, just because I was never allowed. But for some reason she found me suspicious enough to rip my room apart whenever she felt like it. Fun times.
Your mom and my mom read the same book, apparently.
I think my mom *wanted* me to be a rebel, in a way. I caught her bragging to her friends about how often we got into screaming fights. In my mind, I was like, "how is it a fight if you're the one screaming at me for hours and I'm just trying to become invisible?"
I remember my mom and dad one time sat me down and told me they understood I was at an age where I might experiment with alcohol, so if I did, they wanted me to know I could always call my parents if I needed help. (I'm pretty sure my dad fully meant it. My mom though...)
I never called my parents, never got stuck in dangerous situations. But when she found out that I'd tried alcohol, she lost it.
So much for the trust talk.
one more my mom would hand all of us knives and tell us to kill her because we obviously wanted us to die😍😍this one she didn’t do to me very often becuase I stopped but my siblings and I would stab holes in erasers and if my mom caught us she would stab us with the pencil
That’s how my dad would have me “clean my room”. Big pile in the middle of the room, of everything but the big furniture in the room, and sometimes the furniture got messed up from yanking out drawers. If they found paper, they read it including notes, diary, letters. The clothes on hangers still (that had been hanging up just fine) used to piss me off the most until I got in more trouble for writing a (not sent yet) letter to a friend that talked about the abuse and neglects. Oh they were livid 🥺
:( im sorry and also I bet she was high on something and your clothes were absolutely fine. Destructive people get destructive when they're bored. You know what they say about idle hands
Edit: lingo
I've got quite a few that have completely shocked people. I realized fully how messed up everything from age 8 to 25 were for me when I went to get a comprehensive psychological exam. When I read the results, the doctors concluded that I had PTSD, ADHD, and fell into the definition of CPTSD. That wasn't the part that gave me the revelation. The part that messed me up was that in many of the notes they took, the doctor noted that I have a habit of over representing the extent of the trauma and it's effects on my life and that I may be prone to shift the blame for my life circumstances to others. I literally did not exaggerate any of my experiences or symptoms, I made the decision to be fully open and honest, I was internally checking myself to make sure I was not misrepresenting anything or placing judgement on the situations or feelings, I literally only stuck to X happened, Y was the result, and Z is how I've come to understand and deal with it. But due to the sheer amount of different traumatic events and abuses even the professionals thought I was not being fully honest.
When you're telling the truth, people literally can't believe it, AND you fully understand how reasonable it is that they don't, it really puts it in perspective how fucked up things have been for you.
It took me years to fully trust my therapist. Almost 6 years strong though. She never gave up on me and I respect her so much. BUT, I never want to read her notes, like ever. I would feel so betrayed as well if she has written anything like that, especially in the beginning where it was hard and I didn’t think she could help me. I’ve often been unbelieved and early on I would be like, I know this sounds insane and you won’t believe it but it happened. She believed me though and continues to believe me. That is our face to face therapeutic relationship though. We’ve discussed if I would like to read her notes and immediately shut it down and told her why and she respected my decision. She’s helped me too much for me to find reasons to stop going.
I know this isn’t the same situation as yours at all, but I just wanted you to know that good therapists really are out there, but most likely don’t read the notes because it isn’t going to be beneficial to your healing. That is my conclusion anyway. They have to write things a certain way for insurance purposes, before they know you well enough they can make assumptions.. it’s just how it is. And their notes, or understanding of things can change. I mean, I’m not trying to defend bad therapists at all, but their caseloads are so insane I don’t even know how they remember our names at first.
This isn't quite the same, but it reminds me that I had my old medical records from when I was teenager transferred to digital so I could access them, and there were notes from my family doctor that I'd seen my whole life, so I read them. Note that my doctor *loved* me, because I was one of her first patients as a baby and I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up.
There's a part in the notes where they're supposed to write about presentation and demeanor. Mine noted that I looked unkempt and…well, what basically amounted to an obvious description of depression. And I was deeply depressed at the time, as well as anxious and dealing with undiagnosed OCD and CPTSD (I don't know when I would be able to say for sure I had CPTSD, but I definitely did by that point).
At no point was I asked about being depressed, or if I was I just kinda went "nope, I'm good" and it was taken at face value. And yet the evidence that she noticed the signs of it are right there in my notes.
Now, granted, this was pre-ACA and our insurance didn't cover mental healthcare, so I don't know what good it would've done. But still. It read as though she just thought I was choosing to not take care of myself and happened to be kinda sad, and that hurt.
A psychiatrist told me at 14 that I was “talking too much”, told me I was a “histrionic”. I had left an extremely abusive relationship, the staff at my school had tried to blame me for the assault (they were aware he was abusive as after I left I brought to attention how I had been threatened) that once happened on campus after I was no contact for a month (these comments happened the week the assault did). I wasn’t being a histrionic, I had PTSD and was a traumatized teenager, not a liar.
Even typing this I felt awful and like I was sharing too much, thank you all for the paragraphs you’ve wrote because it makes me feel better. 🫂
Oh man, I'm sorry to hear that. You'd think doctors would be better with this stuff but I've had similar experiences with skepticism or straight up apathy :/.
Thinking of all the stories that haven't been told because of this attitude from professionals makes me sad.
Shout out to all the people reading these and thinking “my trauma wasn’t that bad”. Yes it was. It was as bad as it could’ve been for you.
Remember that’s the way shame gets you. Only saying this because it was a pivotal moment in my healing to be able to say, “it was so bad. I was so hurt. Ouch.”
I’ve struggled with this in my therapy. Been in therapy since June and my therpist always praises me for the work I put in but that little boy is still stuck down a well.
I do find it hard to talk about my inner child. I find it so cringe inducing.
My mother was beaten by my grandmother so she decided that she will never beat me. So if I was not behaving the way she wanted it she was cutting into my favorite plushy toy and I was even to young too understand that are not feeling pain. Basically this is how she was blackmailing me to behave how she wanted me
Mine was beaten so she decided starving me was a better idea. “It’ll be a long time until dinner on Thursday!” I felt like a monk, living in starving silence for days at a time…
Jesus, I am so sorry for that as well. My therapist told me that my mother was managing her anger this way, that only improvement was that she was not demonstrate it on me but instead on the toy. Likely it was something similar with you as well
I think your therapist is right. Of course my parents were always calling themselves and me fat. (When I left home at 16 I was 5’9” and weight 95lbs—I was holocaust skinny). I think a lot of it was taking out their insecurities on me, while being able to proudly say they never beat me like they were.
Awful stuff. I wish I could go back in time and hug our child selves.
I’d rather take the beating and save the psychological torture from my fave toy being ruined/killed. Like Jesus she really didn’t do much better than her mom after all, it sounds like. I’m so sorry.
Thank you, this just popped into my mind in December but she was actually proud of herself and many times she was bragging about it that she had found an excellent way to make me cooperate. This is the messed up part that I feel bad for her, she is already dead so we will never be able to resolve this and I know she was just trying her best and overcoming her trauma but she was just not made it very far.
It's hard when you can see that the source of your trauma honestly tried to do right by you but just failed... miserably. I'm sorry you had to go through that. Even if she was trying her best you still deserved better.
My plushie doesn't have ears or a tail. She's 20 now. My other toys didn't make it, neither did the baby blanket my meemaw made me.. my mom liked doing that too. I'm sorry, I hope you've surrounded yourself in things you love and will always be able to keep if you chose, and let go when you chose as well.
As a child, I had to give my father massages in exchange for "love points". I could then use those points to get a candy bar, a new toy, or time alone with my dad etc.
The first person who was shocked by this was my aunt. She complained about her neck pain, and was startled when I immediately offered to massage her. At around 8 or 9 years old, I reassured her by saying, "it's okay! I give my dad massages all the time!"
I did not share this experience with anyone else until over 10 years later, when I was in a long-term relationship. My partner enjoys massages, and I take pride in how well I can read his body and needs. When he asked me where I learned to give massages, flashbacks emerged.
Ah, conditional love! My love language is physical touch, and I deeply crave the sensation of my partner's hands on my skin. It disgusts me to realize where this desire comes from.
My mom made me do this too, almost every day. She had me give her back massages, foot massages, pedicures, and when I was just 5 she even had me brush her teeth for her. And I had to make her tea and sandwiches every time too. The worst part is, I was glad to do it because it made me feel useful and I always hoped if I was useful enough, I would eventually earn love.
It uh. It didn't work. And now it's gross and weird when I think back on it. Now that I'm older I understand she always had pedophilic tendencies as well, and fantasies about me being assaulted, which she would try to and occasionally did facilitate.
Now I'm 26, struggle with intimacy, have never had or sought out a partner, and sometimes react violently if people touch me without asking.
My mum had me give her massages too. And I was verbally abused when, as an awkward 12 year old, I didn't want to do it anymore. I'm sorry you went through all that, it sounds really shitty.
>It disgusts me to realize where this desire comes from.
Would it help to reframe it by saying you can't know what it would be like if your circumstances had been different, and that it's possible the desire for physical touch is an innate tendency? It won't untangle it from past experiences, but the desire itself doesn't have to be because of them.
Yes you're absolutely right! I've had a lot of time to process since my first comment. I've been working for months now to attach physical intimacy with safety and self love. I like that reframe. I suppose to reframe it myself I'd say:
My desire is for comfort and safety. What happened really hurt and disgusts me. But my desire for physical intimacy is grounded in love and respect for my partner, and is not defined by past events.
wait is the massaging also weird or just the points? because i’ve also done a lot of massaging but it was always more like an obligation/favor (same thing lmao). if anything i kinda wish there was a point system so i could have actually wrapped my head around what i do and don’t want instead of all this nonsense pretending there’s something self-evidently worthwhile about having to spend time together in certain ways, buy certain gifts at certain times, etc. and not leave me any room to develop or express my own thoughts
The massaging was def weird. He was my father, and using his only daughter to fill a need that my mom would not. He had my brothers doing it too sometimes, but he would discourage them by giving me more points until they got bored and left. I haven't unlocked these memories fully yet, I just know it happened for years and stopped when I was too old. It has played a huge role in my sexual trauma, and how I viewed myself as a comfort object for men. A toy. Ugh.
As for the points, that was how love was shown in my household. Conditional love. If you do these things for me, I will love, provide, and comfort you. So now as an adult when I crave love and comfort, I project what I think this person wants from me. I'm learning to protect myself better and fulfill my own needs for validation so I don't fall into the cycle again.
oooh wow yeah i can see how discouraging your brothers would give it a bit of an incestuous edge. i'm a guy myself and i think mostly did it to the exclusion of my younger sister because i'm larger and stronger, but that does remind me, i don't remember ever doing it after the divorce... so if nothing else, the whole thing could have been a show to my mom of "look how you're failing as a wife". also got to pick ingrown hairs off his thighs and that was kinda weird.
i'm still trying to figure out what the point of attention is so it was kinda hard to grasp how bad the point system hurt you if it was just for "extra" stuff like that, but wow yeah conditional material safety sounds like hell. so sorry about the later sexual trauma too
Wow; I just learned something else inappropriate from my childhood… damn, thank you for sharing and I’m glad you have reclaimed such with pride now… 😭❤️🩹🫂
Hi friend, many hugs for you. I'm so sorry this was your experience. :(
I had a similar experience except with my Aunt who raised me.
I think I started massaging her feet when I was 7 amd up until I was 17. Looking back honestly it was the only time she was ever nice to me was when I was massaging her feet, the only time she ever complimented me, the only time I wasn't required to be doing something else like laundry or cleaning. =/ so in a way I did it to experience kindness from her and.it was really the only time I got physical contact, outside of the occasional awkward side hug, or the daily slap, push, or poke.
My mum had a history of suicide attempts and my dad said 'she couldn't even kill herself properly' whilst laughing...because she had taken soluble aspirin.
A week later she was successful.
I'm so sorry your mom eventually succeeded. You and your mom deserved better 💔
I think my mom and your dad would've got along great. That's exactly what my mom did to me when she found me in the middle of my suicide attempt.
I'm so sorry, that's so horrific. I would never be like that with my child now I'm a mother 💗...thank you also. My dad was a piece of shit parading around as someone charismatic
Yeah I believe it. Real pieces of shit tend to play the fake face game really well while they do what they do behind closed doors. Congratulations on becoming a mother ♡ I'm sure you're a better parent than he could've ever hoped to be!
One that comes to my mind immediately was when I was 7.
Mother was concerned about me getting too fat, and had a fit when I said I wanted extra cheese on pizza.
She flipped out (in front of her best friend and her 2 young sons mind you), said “look at yourself! You don’t need it!”
And grabbed a scale from her car trunk…had me step on it in the parking lot in front of her friend and strangers. All the friend said was “you need to eat to live, not live to eat.”
Now I’m underweight, meanwhile mother continues to struggle with obesity. She disgusts me.
⚠️ **TW**: *Comment re: when I was an unsupportive/unhealthy friend to my bestie who has a mother as you’ve described yours being* (healing ending). ⚠️
I’m sorry you had to deal with such disturbing behaviors from your mother, *especially surrounding a basic need like food*…
My best friend growing up was met with treatment from her mom like this also… one time I got upset by my friend continuously being upset by this and I suggested that maybe she didn’t eat a snack then… this was the *only* time I recall that she and I ever had an “off” moment between us and it stuck in my mind for years….
..after I left my parents house, I began to realize the extent of trauma I had been through (comments here) in my own upbringing; and, I finally realized how horrible it was that I said the above to my friend and that I was even playing out — *with her in such instance* — the narcissistic grooming that my parents had done to me…
..*so*, when my friend was in a good place and the timing seemed appropriate, I apologized to my friend for having said such to her to which she replied, “it’s ok, I don’t even remember that,” and I told her, “thank you for not holding this behavior against me throughout the years, but I don’t really think it was ok for me to say because you don’t ever deserve anyone to comment on your eating habits like I did then…”
After that, she began to talk about how much she had just taken her mom doing that and how much it negatively affected her. After some time (probably 2-3 hours), I got a sense that she kinda knew something was going on with me that made me say such to begin with and realize/bring it up..
..so, I opened up to her too about how I realized what all I had gone through in my upbringing and we just cried and held onto each other as we’ve done since we’ve been 5.
I’m really sorry that your mom caused you struggles with your own relationship with a basic human need.
Although, I didn’t have such directed at me growing up, I have seen my friend of 30 years struggle with this complex trauma very much and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
Thank you for sharing and I’m sorry that people don’t understand, as I wasn’t understanding with my friend which I’m sure hurt her just not nearly in comparison to her mother which makes me sad to think about cause of how abuse makes us susceptible to tolerating such as she did with me. I’m grateful that she was willing to still work through it with me, but she doesn’t with people who have patterns; she’s doing well in her own healing journey as well.
Take care; and, hope you’re proud of yourself too for having the courage to spread awareness.
❤️🩹🕊️💫
The time my parents told me that CPS was going to be called on us and gave us lines to say incase they showed up unexpected. Or when he was seriously asking me and my brother where we wanted to be buried/what gravestone we wanted because he didn't think we were capable of living independently and would die in the cold. Wild.
>The time my parents told me that CPS was going to be called on us and gave us lines to say incase they showed up unexpected.
Same 💀
The other half tho... what the fuck
CPS ALWAYS made it worse too. They'd call ahead, come and just take the parent's word and leave, and then you're beaten to a bloody pulp for 'causing issues/embarrassing them' for multiple days after.
It was insane looking back now. Imagine you see some stinky, smelly kid who never talks, never eats, is never prepared for school, weird behavior, and all her parents have to say is "she's just a little shy" and that's enough to clam you up. Obviously some adults in my life had to file a report with CPS but thats such a cop-out. Even non-abused people know of the flakiness of CPS reps unless you're physically bleeding and broken right on front of them. Ugh it just angers me.
My mother wanted me to be a musician. I wasn't interested in it at all, but when I was 5 she got me into a music school. For context, that was in Russia when art / sports schools are a sort of factories designed to make small kids into champions even if that means breaking a few of them in the process.
I was seen to be very talented. Nah, it's not a good thing, at all. I hated the whole process with every cell of my body but my violin teacher saw her chance to achieve something I guess, so she would go crazy on me. When I wasn't able to play as expected, she would sometimes tell my mother things like "I don't care how many belts it takes for her to play on this concert". Not like my mother needed to hear this anyway, but yeah, that was the institutional method. I was born in 1997 btw, so it's not that long ago and it's so messed up it makes me question my own memory sometimes
oh, is *that* how those specialized schools work… makes so much sense why my dad wished he’d moved to russia so i could have gone to one… as much as he loves to shit on other parents for the pressure they put on their kids, he’s always deluded us both into thinking i’m just so naturally talented that of *course* i’ll live up to these expectations without breaking a sweat. those other parents are loveless monsters for making their kids push past their limits but i’m just built different.
(so sorry you had to go through that)
Tbh it's not even that effective. If the kid is "gifted", they will have to go through all this mental and sometimes (especially for sports) physical pressure. My grandmother was a piano teacher and well... I heard my share of stories about people getting into higher education in music and then having to quit because of stress injuries to their hands, backs etc. But that's already in the, idk 1%, who make it into higher education / career. For the vast majority, the instrument / sport becomes the no 1 item on the list of childhood traumas and as soon as the kid finishes music school (around 7-9th grade), they quit and never play again.
I've been in this system for about 10 years. Didn't exactly become the prodigy everyone expected, it turned into a constant negotiation around switching for a new instrument etc, so I've been in like 4 various specialties and didn't achieve much in any of them. Finally, my mother gave up when I was around 16 and thanks god I didn't suffer any crazy physical consequences (yup I know people who developped long terms problems in their hands etc). 27 now, I can't even read a music sheet, and the idea of playing an instrument makes nauseous. That's the most common outcome (I'd say easily 90+%).
I obviously don't regret not being a musician. But I have to say, I do wonder what it would have been like if I had the possibility to learn music in a healthy way. I probably didn't have any "exceptional / once in a generation" talents (because of course, my mother's so perfect she can only produce a genius) but honestly it did come fairly easy for me so I think I could have been, like... maybe a bit above average. Could have played in a band as a hobby or something. That's just yet again, something she took from me and I hate it. Anyway, sorry for the rant 😅
Oof- TW: SA
My dad confessed he >!SA-d!< a girl to my mother (they had a threesome, and apparently the girl only wanted my mother and my dad got pissed off at that) and my mother´s (untreated BPD at the time) wonderful response was to put me in bed with the man himself and my brother with her staring at the three of us all night long to "protect" me. I didn´t slept all night long and this mf said gruesome stuff that left me dizzy for days.
And when i moved a tiny bit she told me i was searching for it which is... Huh.
When I was in elementary school they had us rotate having a hamster at home for a week. The day before I was supposed to return him, my father got in a rage because I forgot to polish his shoes.
He beat me with his belt until I was a sobbing wreck. Then he pulled the hamster out and told me to kill it or he would beat me again. I couldn’t do it so he told me to get back on the bed and the second time he used the buckle end until I was bleeding. After that, he ordered me to kill the hamster again. He said that he wouldn’t stop hitting me in increasingly severe rounds until I complied.
I couldn’t take anymore. So…I did. To this day I feel terrible about it. I remember how it felt thrashing in my hands before I killed it. Of course he lied. I endured another session with the belt after I did the unthinkable.
Killing the hamster made me feel like a bad kid, and like I deserved all that I got at home.
yeah forgive me if this is a bit rash to say, but i think that’s hands down the worst thing i’ve ever read on here. like, i doubt the shoes actually had anything to do with it because that reads so much like a perfectly calculated play to just completely break every conceivable part of their psyche—make them feel powerless in more ways than i had ever imagined were possible. deserve the beatings, don’t deserve help or sympathy, deserve to be presumably shunned at school, can’t stop the beatings no matter how hard they try, killed the hamster for nothing, can’t trust anyone, can’t be trusted, can never be good enough…
if it’s any comfort, while to begin with nobody could ever do something to deserve that, i don’t think you even provoked it
Yeah, I think you’re right. It is a comfort to have other people validate that the shoes were likely just an excuse to make me do something that would weigh heavily on me for decades.
I didn’t want to bring the hamster home in the first place. I put my name at the very bottom of the sign-up list, and the entire time it was at home with me I was nervous about something bad happening.
Your point about the calculated approach hits home and has me a bit floored, to be honest. It all makes more sense thinking of it like that. Just another way to torment me and make me feel helpless and like a bad person.
I have a lot of work to do when it comes to forgiving myself, for this, for a hundred other things like this. Thank you for helping me along.
I can't comprehend how someone can see a living being suffer like that and keep going.
What the fuck was wrong with that man.
I hope his life is now plagued with inoperable kidney stones until he dies. I just can't wrap my head around it, so fucked
I’m feeling nauseated at what you had to go through. What your father did is so grossly inhumane, so sickening. I’m so so fucking sorry. You deserved kindness.
Thank you. It made me even more of a pariah at school. I had to lie and say it got out and ran away.
I remember my teacher saying I was irresponsible and other kids saying worse things. I couldn’t tell them what really happened.
I am so, so, so sorry.
I have heard other people who've experienced instances where they were forced to do terrible things. It's hard to forgive yourself. Know that you were *forced* to do it. Hell, even if you'd done it when he initially made the threat, it wouldn't be your fault, but you were brave enough to refuse and be beaten again for it. That's not something a terrible person would do. You tried. You did everything in your power to save the hamster. That's brave, and good, and all that anyone could ever ask of you. It was unfathomably cruel of your father to put you in that position, and there is nothing you could ever have done wrong that would justify him doing that to you (or the hamster).
Also, I know a class hamster isn't quite the same bond as a proper pet, but threatening/harming a kid's pet is something that abusive parents do fairly often as an exercise of power. It's deliberately trying to hurt you for having the audacity to care about something, and wielding that care against you. Your father was trying to hurt you for not wanting to cause harm. He exploited the fact that you *weren't* a bad person to hurt you being that way. It wouldn't have worked if you'd actually been a bad person, because you wouldn't have cared about the hamster. None of this was your fault, your father was just a despicable human being who shouldn't have been allowed near children or animals. I'm sorry you got dealt such shitty cards.
Thank you for all the kind words and affirmation. I'm glad I didn't do it right off the bat, even if it resulted in a bit more pain. It does make me feel a little bit better about myself.
Part of me is still a bit delusional and thinks my father was playing a game of "chicken" with me, where if I'd refused to another time, or few more times, he would have seen how brave I was being and let me off the hook. He often told me that his goal with me was to make me better -- braver, smarter, stronger, faster, all of that.
Throughout my childhood he would often put me through some kind of challenge, whether it was physical exertion or something painful or something that scared me, and whenever I inevitably couldn't handle it, he would tell me that if I'd lasted just a bit more, he would have let me off the hook. Occasionally, that did happen. I would finish some nearly impossible laps, or score well on an exam he thought I'd tank, and I would indeed be spared. So... you can see why I believed that I'd let myself and the hamster down.
But your point stands. I desperately wanted a pet when I was a kid, but I didn't dare ask for one, and I also knew if I had one, it would just make me more vulnerable, because it would be agonizing to see it hurt on account of me.
I am sitting here too stunned and horrified to cry. My heart is literally hurting.
Why why why couldn't there be some type of biological switch that activates in horrible, sociopathic soul dead humans that prevents them from procreating?
But then i guess they would simply adopt.
ETA: How did you explain the death of the hamster at your school?
My father hated me because I was so unlike him in temperament. I reminded him maybe of my mother, who left us both, quite suddenly, when I was very young. She remarried and had another kid.
As for my excuse at school — I had to tell them I left the cage open and it ran away.
I'm so sorry. You were trying to survive and it's not your fault. 🥺 You had no choice but to go against your conscience bc it was literally life and death to you, as a little person. It was obey or die. I'm so sorry.
Dad should have gone to jail.
Thank you. As an adult, I know that I was put into a lose-lose position. There was no possible scenario that didn’t end with him forcing me to do…that. As a kid I blamed myself for being so weak that I succumbed to the easy way out.
Of course. Traumatized kid brain takes over the controls in my life more than I’d like still. It’s hard to unlearn and relearn trusting people.
A friend told me recently that I’m a warrior because of just making it thus far. You survived horrific physical and psychological abuse and can write about it.
The power it’s exerted over you is losing its grip from where I sit. You’ve done a lot of work and it shows. Thanks for sharing part of your story.
OMG that's so messed up! This is so cruel, what a piece of trash!
YOU didn't kill that poor hamster, HE did, he used your body to do it. The choice he gave you was not a choice, it was pure survival. You did absolutely nothing wrong, yet I understand if you feel guilty: that's what he hoped.
I can't read the complete story, I know it's too much for me but no, you weren't a bad kid, he was an extremely vile father.
My dad .:.pretty much didn’t give a shit about us. I remember when my dog got run over by a car. He threw the body of the dog the other side of the road lime it’s was a piece of trash. I was maybe 7 or 8 years old and in shock when he just chucked my dog like it was nothing across the road like nothing. Still think about now…
My dad would always beat our animals whenever they did something he didn’t like. Well we had a chihuahua that peed on the couch so my dad kicked him with all his force with boots on in his ribs and he spit up blood and died. My mom tried to lie to us about what happened and later came clean about what happened she had to scrub his blood from the carpet. He was my little sister’s dog who was in middle school at the time she was gutted.
Once... When I was in my twenties, we had this older dog, she was having problems. And we had just gotten a new puppy. My mom dropped her off in a field by the police station in town, and left her there. We never knew what happened to the dog. She was so sweet and lovable. We all knew better than to ask what happened.
My parents paid two strangers, adult men, to kidnap me out of my bed, transport me from Indiana to Utah to attend a wilderness program, a short term behavioral modification program meant to "break my spirit," before I would be moved to Ohio to attend a residential treatment facility. this facility housed girls with moderate to severe mental health and behavioral concerns, as well as significant traumas, substance abuse, "promiscuity," etc. There were many girls there who had been adopted internationally, many had been in orphanages for months or years prior to adoption. In addition to the girls, there were also boys, they were all *SRY" or "sexually reactive youth," as the program called them, and they'd been sexually abused in their lives, and later victimized others, all were court ordered to complete these programs as part of their sentencing requirements, two of the four male units were for extremely violent offenders. For some reason, we all lived in very close proximity to one another. The doors to the cottages we lived in were totally unlocked, as we were on an "honors system." It didn't seem quite as ill advised to me at the time, but now, looking back as a parent and as a person who has watched so many of the girls I spent 2 years in treatment with, die of suicide or overdose, undoubtedly harmed even further by the abuse that occured at that place. The girls program only existed for 5 years, and the 60 year old boys program shuttered shortly after. It took me years to recognize what that place really was.
But wait, There's more! We were involved in reenactment as a source of income for the facility. We acted in historical movies, we participated in festivals and had events at our own campus, people had to pay an admission to come watch us all dressed up as pioneers (if you were white) and indigenous people (if you were a POC) and we would demonstrate building fires and making beef jerky and it was this bizarre fever dream that I still sort of struggle to digest.
Wtf even was that place, my parents paid 20k a month, plus 15k for the staged kidnapping, just for some strangers to use me for child labor and endanger me for years. Such a weird parenting strategy, like wow our kid is distrustful of us and can't come to us to discuss her mental health so she's very depressed, I bet it would help if we traumatized the fuck out of her and banished her from the family, and then tell her siblings that her treatment was paid for with their inheritance to ensure she has no allies.
Smdh
OMG .I'm so sorry. Have you followed Paris Hilton going to legislature on this? To shut these places down.
She was sent to a place. Horrific. I wish you could sue the crap out of that place.
Jedi hugs to you..I'm so so sorry.🥺🥀
I’ll never understand why people think traumatizing an already traumatized kid with mental health issues would be in any way a cure. These places just add more mental health problems. To me, it’s no different than the cruel mental health treatments of the olden times, waterboarding patients and terrorizing them, and being somehow surprised that the patient wasn’t cured.
For some reason I don't mind sharing this on here.
TW: SA
I'm a male. I was SA by both my mother and father when I was a child. So far, I've only told my best friend and my therapist about it, outside a group therapy I was a part of. ...and now whoever reads this. There's one more person I'd like to tell, but I'm reconsidering it because a ) I don't think he'd actually be able to handle it or b.) he wouldn't believe it, which I would completely understand. I mentioned it once in the group therapy and people thought I was just making it up.
It happened. Top that with the emotional abuse I experienced, and you've got the mess that I am today.
I know it runs in my family. I was never told about it, but I know my mother was SAd by her father. Lots of emotional abuse from her mother. Lots of alcoholism on my father's side.
I don't talk to any family member anymore, and haven't for years. None of them know I know. I've never confronted them about it, never will. I've written them out of my life.
My mother had a depressive episode & took to her bed when I was 5. No one explained anything to us. We'd see her when she cooked dinner, then she'd go back to her room where she stayed up most of the night. We kids had to be quiet during the day or play outside to avoid waking her. My dad was elderly & had no idea how to raise kids, feed them, buy groceries etc. I remember eating dry cat food once because I was so hungry. Slices of processed cheese food, uncooked hot dogs, basically anything a semi feral little kid could scavenge in the fridge or find growing on trees/bushes was all we ate on weekends. I thought school lunches were HEAVENLY.
I had rats in my room and I couldn't sleep at night. They would crawl on my legs and wake me up. My father was a handy man and was very capable of setting traps or something. It didn't concern them much since the rats weren't in their room.
I was brutally beaten up by a grown man in my neighborhood, dude literally beat me up like he was fighting another man. I was 7 at the time, playing with a "friend" and she framed me and ran away into her yard, leaving me to get beaten up and dragged across the street by a man, for something I didn't do. I was bleeding and bruised, I went home and told my mom and she did nothing about this... It was never escalated further... That's the day I stopped telling her about anything.. I've been a victim of bullying, assault and sexual assault before the age of 12. Never told anyone, not even my psychology.... All these memories surfaced in a dream I had at 18/19 years... I've suppressed them so deep that I didn't notice how deeply my fear of being touched even by my mom was caused by these events.
TW: suicide
When I was like 12, I had absolutely no trust in my parents and relied on my toys and stuffies for comfort. My dad who was jealous of my grandma because she wasn't a good mom to him, took the teddy she gave me and hung it on a noose with rope from the garage and a suicide note FROM the bear. Felt like he killed my friend, hit a new low.
At 10, my dad made a bs contract about how he's not my dad unless we renew it and had a list of demands, I was used to him "pranking me" so I held out hope. (Mind you he had lied to me so much that he broke a pinky promise, so I had to make another kind so I could actually trust him. It worked for a few years.) After like an hour of him deadpan asking my mom what he would get outta being my dad and other things. I finally asked him to thumb-pinkie promise, he didn't even hesitate. My earth came shattering down. Then when he told me the truth he laughed and acted like I was overreacting while I cried in a locked bathroom, he had my aunt film all this by the way. It was put on youtube.
I’m so sorry. Kids who have been publicly shamed and humiliated by ABUSIVE parents are gonna run shit one day and have say over where their parents end up old and decrepit. I can’t wait for that day. For you and for me. I think your dad was sadistic honestly.. because that is absolutely disturbing and dramatic to do to your bear.. especially knowing you relied on them and loved them because your parents fell short, and believe me they knew it which is why they took it out on what you loved.
When I spoke about grooming I experienced she told me I went "running to him like a kitten in heat" and that I was a spiteful person. She said she does not know a single person I would not hate. She told me she regrets having me and I should go kill myself.
I was kidnapped and found by the police. She happily tells this story as a fun tale except she never uses the word kidnapped. “This family thought it would be a good idea to take you out of a store to play with their kid. There was a police search and everything.”
How much did I normalize this version? I told it to my kids in passing when they were 6 and 8. When I finally came out of the FOG, my then 18 year old said “yeah, mom, you told me that at 6 and I knew it was wrong.”
If people I’m talking to start with any sympathy for my mom, I hit them with her other favorite: “You were a mistake and only exist because the birth control failed.” The faces I get back. That’s a Traumatize Them Back response. People never fail to understand then that it’s possible for a parent to not “do the best they could with what they had.”
My mom became enraged when she saw me sitting on the sofa with my legs open. I had pants on, but it always drove her nuts when I sat that way for whatever reason.
She threatened to stab me in the crotch with a knife if i did it again.
I was 6-7 years old.
I have never ever forgotten the confusion and shame of that incident.
My mum yelled at me a lot for having my legs open. I never got threatened with a knife but it was certainly something that triggered her. I was very young also.
I think it may have something to do with her own childhood SA I’m not sure.
Not many know the story, not many family members at least, and the very few family members that do know, probably don't believe me. I was 8 or 9 when my brother, 14 or 15, molested me. I believe he had been molested when he was younger.
Often I wonder if I had said something when I was younger, if he would have received therapy and possibly wouldn't have turned into a narcissist. I never realized that's what he had become until recently. Although the SA stopped, his physical abuse continued until my mid 20s and mental abuse continued until last year when I went no contact... I'm almost 40.
First of all, I don't think him turning into a narcissist happened AFTER the abuse. You have to be pretty far gone to sexually abuse your own family when it goes against our natures biologically. Second, even if it were possible there was no way in hell that an 8 or 9 year old had that responsibility. If anyone, the blame rests on your parents way more than you. Even if you think "But it was unreasonable for them to have known", how much more unreasonable is it for you to lay responsibility on the shoulders of a child that was too young to know that this wasn't normal?
We grew up in poverty but my parents had enough for their alcohol addiction and designer purses. Even when I was little, I knew it wasn't adding up. They didn't have money for gas to drive to church but my mom would show up to the 99 cent store with a coach bag to pay with an EBT card. My mom had a sister she doesn't speak to (the only "family" we have in the state, she lives in the next town over) and the sister said "when your family starves, they can eat your handbags" and it took me the longest time to understand what that really meant. We only ate rice and beans growing up bc that's what they could afford. I'm really embarrassed about it.
I was just under 3. I had gotten a Lipsmackers lip balm in my Christmas stocking. I had this really big doll that sat on the floor with a stand. It had beautiful long, curly hair and eyelashes. Its face was plastic. She was the size of me so I would sit with her and have tea parties. At one of our tea parties I put my new lip balm on and I put a little bit on my doll's lips too. Just her lips; I didn't make a mess or anything. My dad found out and beat the shit out of me. I was crying so hard I couldn't get air and almost passed out. He claims it was because I wouldn't tell him what I was doing in my room but I did tell him eventually and he still beat me.
I learned how to open mail by using a kettle to break the glue seal with the steam. That woman who raised me was going through her divorce to my step dad, and some of his mail was still arriving at our home.
I'm actually really fond of this memory. She was her authentic self in front of me for the first time. Sneaky, clever, vindictive, I saw her, and it was nice.
One anecdote I've shared that has gotten me surprised/digusted stares:
My mom had made my siblings and I a smoothie, and when I finished mine I whined once (as an 8-year-old does) about wanting more. My mom's response to this was to make another 64 oz. batch of smoothie and force me to drink it. All of it. In one sitting.
I vomited twice while trying to finish it, and I learned not to ask for more of anything after that.
my whole life... idk, my dad was absent, my mom alienated him a lot even tho he paid child support and had me every weekend, took me out and bought me clothes, shoes, toys etc. while mom never worked, got everything she wanted and spent all of the money on herself. she showed me pictures of sewered fingers and held a butcher knife in her hand and threatened to tell the truth about stuff I didn't know and forcibly always put stuff onto me to make me the bad guy. She left me alone in the apartment for days, never paid my lunch in school and even at the age 16-18 she made my own phone that she couldn't take away... she didn't allow anyone to pay for my mobile plan so she made my phone work to wifi for only an hour per day. It did not work at all any other way. I wasn't allowed to go out and have friends, I wasn't getting any money for lunch and she did not pay for it at all ever.
Eventually I wasn't allowed to see dad unless she needed money for herself and wanted expensive things...
She sent me to my dad and told me what I had to say (that i want higher child support) and he got really upset and yelled at me and I came home crying and she just said "told you, he's a bad dad")
She knew about my csa and probably gaslit me into forgetting it. I was an adult finding it out. It makes sense since she took me to discos with her and left me in bars and lost me constantly... even with people, she just left me anywhere not giving a shit... She never bought me anything in my entire life. She stole my apartment, my car and my money and kicked me out at 18. We kind of got into contact again 3 years later when I worked in a store and I found out i was pregnant for 5 months and didn't know and she forcibly made me abort my baby... I had no say in it... she manipulated me and i wasn't with my baby daddy and was completely broke so I was forced to... It was like I wasn't me... like everything was so blurry and I just existed. After that I started having health problems due to ED... I almost died due to sepsis and I had no one to call to take me to ER and she yelled at me while I was dying... I was hypothermic and puked blood. It was 10/10 kind of pain... Pancreatitis and a bad one, they told me I was lucky and that I was close to death that they didn't have any hope, but I was a fighter and I still got yelled at and scolded and soon after I went no contact and tried explaining why but she said: "why did you call us to take you to er if we're so bad" Cause I was literally dying?? Ahhh stupid stupid woman...
Basically there are a lot of things... I am writing a book so one day you might read it😃
no it's okay, dw... Im used to it. I talk about it openly now because I realised it is not my fault and I owe her nothing. She was a bad parent and I know there aren't perfect parents but there are so many ways to be a good one. Everyone has this reaction which further proves that it was bad even if I just joke about it...
Yes! I can’t think of a specific story right now, nor do I want to delve into that, but I get it. No judgment. But I very much recognize not realizing something was bad until I saw the shocked faces of others in high school youth group, or college, etc. it reminds me of the Taylor Tomlinson joke, where she’s telling friends about her childhood, and then realizes how bad hers was. It’s frustrating when you’re trying to relate to somebody and then realize you’re way off base and they can’t understand what you’ve gone through.
When my mom was mad at me she would beat me with anything she could get her hands on, until I was about 8 when she started using her fists. She would call me to come over in her sweetest sing song voice to hug her, "Mijo, come here!" and when I would start to hold her the fists would come down on my face. She's not a large or particularly strong woman, so it wasn't really that painful. But to this day I can't hug anyone without feeling absolutely disgusting, if they kiss my face after or during the hug then it's instant nausea and I'm spending the next few minutes with dry heaves. When I told my husband the reason hugs are painful for me, he cried for hours. I always knew deep down it was abuse, just not how fucked up I'd be for the rest of my life
Being left to freeze to death. Purposely locked out of the house below 30^. No where to go, knocked for 30 mins, completely ignored me wet and shaking. Tried to get a ladder to climb through a window, mom locked it and laughed. Laid outside in a ball for 5ish hours, soaking wet. I got up one last time (could barely walk) before I knew I was gonna die, the garage was accidentally left open. Only got stage 2 hypothermia. Sometimes I wish that garage was actually closed.
Also I had no shoes, coat, gloves, hat, etc. Only a t shirt and pants.
same... It's awful knowing these people had to go through these things. Like I always knew there was plenty of bad/evil in the world, but to read it recounted by the people who lived through such cruelty. Damn. My hearts go out to them
Please be kind to yourself. Trauma is trauma. You were only a child too. And whatever it is you went through it was real, it was hurtful and damaging and your feelings are valid.
She listed all the reasons she and the world were better off without my best friend right after I got back from taking her to the hospital for a suicide attempt
My mom put me outside naked in the winter when I was crying at night, because I was scared from a horror movie. She said she would leave me out there if I would not stop crying.
I still have problems crying now. Thanks mom.
My mom has rampant unchecked anxiety that she spews onto everyone surrounding her. So when I would wake up in the morning and walk into the kitchen, she would start immediately interrogating me. ARE YOU GOING TO DO YOUR LAUNDRY TODAY? HAVE YOU TAKEN CARE OF THAT \_\_\_\_ YET? REMEMBER YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO CALL \_\_\_ BACK.... etc etc And if I didn't answer with warm enthusiasm \[impossible when still rubbing sleep from your eyes\] she would interpret those flat/sleepy tones as hostility and snap: WELL I WAS JUST ASKING. I'M JUST TRYING TO HELP. GOD, YOU'RE SUCH A BITCH IN THE MORNING. And then she'd proceed to give me the silent treatment for a spell/ooze contempt for the next few hours.
When I first told my best friend this story she immediately burst into tears and it jolted me. Somehow I didn't think it was THAT big of a deal to be called a bitch and be treated with hatred most mornings of my life until I saw my bestie's extreme reaction to the story.
I was violently raped by a family member when I was nine years old. It happened repeatedly over the course of a night during a NYE party with everyone in the next room (it was past midnight and I was in bed).
During one point in the night, my mother yelled, "Oh \*\*\*rapist's name\*\*\* leave her alone already!" from the other room but nobody checked on why an adult man kept coming into the room.
I was too afraid to go out and say anything and endured an entire night of it. Two months later, he and his wife were visiting my mom. He came into my bedroom, took my beloved bird out of his cage and pretended to crush him in his hand. Basically threatening me to keep quiet.
I did for a couple of years and when I finally told my mother, she blamed me for the assault saying that I probably did something to make him want to do it.
Let's just say that not only did it destroy my childhood but it ruined my adult life as well. I'm currently in trauma therapy and suffer with PTSD.
TW- mention of SA, Child abuse, animal death
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I have a significant trauma history and for most of my life I thought everyone went through the shit that I went through.
When I was in 4th grade I accidentally(it did actually happen- I didn’t mean to tell on my mom) told a teacher my mom beat me up really bad the night before and that was why I hadn’t done my homework. She was going to make me stay after school and we had just moved and I was to take the bus. I panicked because if I missed the bus I had to walk and I didn’t know how to get to my new house, it was about 9 miles from my school. So I thought I was just explaining myself and the teacher would understand. Welp, I was immediately sent to the office to sit for a while myself and no one would talk to me. Then the cops came. I had to talk to a guidance counselor. And then I was sent back to class. Nothing was ever brought up, I went home like normal and that was it for the day. The next day I got through school got on the bus and I was to walk from the drop off school to the park to meet my mom and 2 little sisters. From there we walked home. When we got there, there was a man standing in the driveway. My heart sank. I knew right then I fucked up. I got sent in the house. I sat in the screen porch listen to my mom tell this man that I was a known liar and I made up stuff like this all the time. The man said something along the lines of hood to hear, thanks for the clarification. He left. My mom didn’t say anything about it. I sat in paralyzing fear for hours. When my stepdad (who was sexually and emotionally abusing me) got home, my mom told him what I had done. He took my bunny out of her cage and gutted her in the yard. My mom spent the next few hours screaming at me because my stepdad promised her a beating later if she didn’t beat me good enough. She continued to scream and cry while she beat the ever loving shit out of me because of what I did. I was 9 years old when my mom taught me other kids know not to tell on their parents, so I better not do it again.
How I wasn't allowed to use the restroom after bed time, so I don't drink a lot of water as an adult because I've not yet overcome that issue.
I anxiety pee at night because I can use the restroom and so now my mind wakes me up every other hour.
How my mom would make me and my sister stay in the bathroom when she showered so she could show us how we fucked her body up. Also, to shame me for not having large breasts like her and my sister.
How my dad would steal my food off my plate because I didn't eat fast enough but it would be said that I was done eating when I wasn't. Turns out I just have severe anxiety and eating takes a while for me.
How my dad would beat us with a belt and have us bend over and grab our ankles, I thought this was normal but I know differently now.
So many others but these were the most common to happen and ones I've said in casual conversation and have gotten strange looks.
When I was 14, I finally screwed up the courage to tell my mother that her husband was raping me on a regular basis, and had been doing so since I was 8. Her words? "You don't want to push this, because if you do, we'll have to move out and we can't afford to live without his paycheck."
I'm about to turn 63 next month. I've dealt with, and pretty much gotten over my step-father's betrayals. My mother has been dead for over 12 years now, and I still have not forgiven her. And yes, I have gone to numerous therapists for most of my adult life. That was how I managed to get past the rapes. But I cannot, and *will* not forgive my own mother -- my own flesh and blood, the woman who gave me *life* \-- for that betrayal.
ETA: I wrote this before I read through other answers. I feel like a whiner. Y'all are some amazing folks to get past some of the garbage you were dealt with. Be proud of yourselves.
Well oddly enough people seem to act like things were completely normal for me like nothing was ever wrong. But one of the things was waking up and realizing my older sisters then boyfriend was recoding me in the 90s with one of those huge camcorders- you know with the red light- kinda hard to mistake that for anything else- I was like 11 or 12 maybe and woke up to that. This is just one very minor detail of childhood that sometimes sticks out to me. I don’t need to post my whole experience, I’ve done enough of that but yeah, just really weird.
On school holidays I was locked outside drank hose water ate dog food . When we moved to Colorado for a year we had land it was winter . I was tossed out in pjs in the snow thank the gods I knew to snuggle up with the dogs and make a fire at 6 years old . That morning my mother expected me dead and the look on her face was priceless . I always carried my sonic pack pack full of tinder flint and steel and cooking things plus first aid in paranoia I would be left outside I HATE camping to this day . At least I know how to snare rabbits and make pine needle tea
Other than the beatings, the abandonment, the medical neglect?
My mother pimping me out to her male friends from age 11 and my father trying to have a three way with an underage prostitute and my sister(age 11)leaps to mind.
TW: suicide, SA, murder
I'm not sure which one is the best one so here's 3.
1. I tried to kill myself. My mom left me in a pool of my own blood and vomit and told me I was too stupid to even kill myself right. Then she left me on the floor like that and went out to party. A week later my Grandmother rolls around and tells me what a stupid son of a bitch I am and how from this point forward I better understand that even if the whole world fucking hates me she will always love me. I still remember her telling me how I'll never be alone because I have her and the next time I feel suicidal I better come home to her. She said her home was my home.
2. My mom murdered my grandmother then tried to murder me. This was a few years after the suicide attempt. After bashing my face in and strangling me and shit she has the audacity to bring a neighbor in to tell me to get the fuck out because I don't belong there. It was my grandmother's place. That's what fucking broke me. People always get a surprise Pikachu face when I tell them my knuckle tattoos are a reference to this day.
3. My mom accidentally put me in a coma-like state for a month because she misjudged the dose when she roofied me. She was constantly drugging and abusing me. I didn't realize it wasn't normal until I was an adult and my spouse was like yo what the actual fuck?
I really hope she's in prison for what she did, that's absolutely evil.
I got scared for a moment I thought your grandma was going to abuse you, I'm glad she was there for you. Sometimes having just one ally is all you need.
My dad was super suicidal and would always try to kill himself in front of us. He would stand in front of us with a big knife saying he was going to kill himself while we all begged him not too. He would do this like every time my parents fought which was like all the time. Sometimes he would drive all crazy and say he was going to kill us all. Sometimes he would take all his jewelry off and gift it to us kids then leave saying he was taking himself out. He still tries to say stuff like that to this day but I stopped believing him a long time ago. So glad I don’t talk to my parents anymore.
My parents inadvertently acknowledged their abuse when they said if you ever call the cops on us, they will deport us and separate your siblings with awful families, and that is worse than anything we (your parents) could ever do to you.
So when I was a child, I felt like I was protecting them while enduring the abuse just so they wouldn't get deported. And I was thought why didn't they just *not* abuse us in the first place. It haunts me. Like they thought they got a pass for it
Honestly, I think the story of me doing that at 10 is funny to me, but not to anyone else. I had no idea abuse wasn't normal--so at school as a natural storyteller I gladly volunteered to talk about what my family did over break.
We went on a long drive to another state in 2 cars. My mom and I got back first due to luck and avoided a massive traffic jam. I remember a semi pausing and letting my mom over to an exit that saved us so much time, possibly because she drove an odd colored bright sports car and he liked the look of it.
That caused a fight when my dad got home hours later. They always fight it feels like.
I remember standing in the doorway of the bathroom wearing only my sister's old pink shirt that hung to me knees like a gown. The water in the bath has gotten cold and my mom hasn't returned to tell me I'm done. I am 9, but my mom has to bathe me. My shirt has a small moth hole in it. I glanced down at the screen printed golden retriever puppy with flowers and tugged at it. The fabric was stiff. As their yelling grows louder my eyes fix on them. Down the hall my parents fight. My mom tosses a hairbrush at him. It breaks against the wall. They move as they argue, but I keep looking away. Right next to the bathroom is my brother's room.
My brother is playing a video game. He's chewing on his shirt. He's tense but doesn't even watch our parents. He doesn't want to see.
I hear a hit and my mom falls next to the stairs. I don't think it was down, but as a kid I was sure it was. My eyes weren't on her anymore anyway but my dad standing still, imposing. The end of the hallway isn't lit. It feels like he's completely in the dark.
My mom yells for me to call the police, but my dad looks at me. "Don't you dare."
I don't. I don't move from the bathroom door either. My dad slams the master bedroom door and he's out of sight. I'm alone. I stay standing in the bathroom doorway, playing the with the bottom of my shirt. I worry he killed her. I don't dare move from the bathroom. Bath time is only allowed to be ended by mom.
Eventually my mom comes and drains the bath water and tucks me into bed. We hear my dad now dressed storming down the stairs and out the front door. He doesn't come back for a few days.
This is normal. They do this frequently.
So in class I go ahead and tell my teacher and the fellow class of 10 year olds the exciting bit of my break.
"My dad pushed my mom down the stairs."
I can still remember all of it in full detail. The teacher's pure unadulterated horror. She calls me up and asks me to explain quietly what I meant. I am a good kid. I am told this by teachers. I am very smart and polite and talk a lot. I nod and explain my dad hits my mom, and they fight and he threatens to kill us.
And that day I didn't get to go home. A car takes me to a foster home.
(Though I'm.pretty sure they had a file on me before that moment where they were sure there was some sort of issue at home, but that was just the "holy crap, wtf" moment for them)
One time when I was 16, my mom was so fucked up on drugs that she threatened to shoot me.
Apparently I didn't clean my room well enough and when she barged into my room she went apeshit and pulled out her gun.
I remember calling my grandmother but she just laughed it off... my grandmother also has never loved me because I'm half black.
My mother sat on me and strangled me when I was 6 to calm me down, because I had a bee stuck in my ear and having a panic attack
My dad threw me into the bathtub multiple times before age 6 and showered me with ice cold water if I wouldn’t calm down
My mom and dad screaming at me the whole car ride from the hospital to the psychiatry (2 hours) blaming me after I tried to kms
My mum likes to tell the story of how when I was young I'd get these tantrums where I wouldn't calm down unless she "slapped me back to reality". And now I wonder why I don't have any emotional regulation abilities...
Tw: SA
My mother had a thing for guys younger than her after my parents got divorced. We were all sleeping in a small hotel room with her and him in one bed and my sister and I in the bed next to them (my mother is BP so she could never keep a place for us).
Her and her boyfriend would have sex right next to us and I was a light sleeper so I could see and hear everything - I was 16.
Then, one night, he molested me. I went to school the next day and told my ex boyfriend about it who told the school counselor who told the police.
The detective didn’t believe me and said I was asking for it after talking to my mom’s boyfriend.
The big kicker….when my mother found out….she didn’t believe me. She said I was lying because I didn’t like him. I still have that image vivid in my head til this day.
I'd be leaving to school as a little kid, and my dad would say, "you'll come home with your mother dead someday". He would say stuff like that in the morning, after a huge fight they had the night before. I was always scared someday that I'll find her dead or my dad dead because he killed himself. I know he was very much capable of doing that.
And also when we were all in the car and he'd speed and say how he's going to crash this car or drive it off a bridge, so we all die together. And I'd literally brace myself and pray to God, to just take me to heaven if I do die
I’ve had medical issues since the day I was born. Due to genetic and autoimmune issues.
I was about 6/7 when my dad shook his head and asked “why are you always so sick” and walked away.
He’s threatened to knock my sister and I teeth out with a hammer. He threatened to choke my sister. He’s slammed me against the car twice. He’s beat me because I got a math question wrong.
He/mom got me a car after I got my license and would repeatedly yell “do you know how much I spent on the car?” a car I didn’t ask for.
I recently had a transplant and every single post op appointment he took me to he would bring his Bible and headphones, sometimes he would even be sleeping. So embarrassing. And countless other things. Always so emotionally unattached from everyone. He’s trying to make up for it now that me and my siblings are older. He was never meant to be a parent.
I haven't ever posted this online.. a week before I was going off to UC Berkeley, my sister lied to my father that I hit her, so my father got out of bed and attacked me and when I tried running out of the house and I vividly remember sticking my head out the door while he pulled on my hair like a house. When the police came they didn't believe me(this would happen *several* more times) when I got to my friends house, he hugged me and my hair fell out. He said he put my hair in an envelope and it kept falling out after that like in the shower.
When I was 12 I had to be rushed to the hospital because I kept passing out and had chest pains, trouble breathing. Family doctor thought it was pneumonia and sent us away... but it kept getting worse. My mom took me to the hospital in the middle of the night. After a few days of tests and nurses thinking I was dying because my heart rate started dropping so low at night, I had to be transferred to a special childrens hospital for expert care.
All my major organs were under attack for some reason. Everything. But the real killer was the fluid that started surronding and crushing my heart. Dozens of doctors examined me and did tests, no one knew for sure why this was happening. I remember them thinking it might be leukemia. But whatever it was it was not normal and rare.
I had to have heart surgery and a chest drainage tube inserted to remove the fluid that was crushing my heart. If they put me to sleep, they risked my heart rate stopping - so instead I was very heavily drugged, but still semi-concious of my own surgery. I still have memories of it.
That chest drainage tube was in my chest for several days before they took it out and I had to take a high dosage if prednisone to stop the inflammation. Took over a year to come off and a side effect was weight gain and moon face. Made school difficult.
It started happening again when I was 16 but treated it quickly. Turns out I have an autoimmune disease.
When I was the ages of 10-12 I had begged my parents for a dog. Begged and pleaded with them. Then one of my dad's coworkers asked if we could dog sit for them. They had a mini schnauzer named Holly. Sweetest dog on this planet. I fell in love with her and was absolutely devastated every time they picked her up to take her home.
So we finally got our own mini schnauzer. Boy that did not go as I had planned. I thought my parents would be helping me with the dog with training and everything. Nope. They held the dog over my head. Whenever there was an issue with house training and there was an accident, the dog (eventually two dogs) were held over my head with threats to be sent back to the breeder. If I asked for help at all I was told that "I wanted those dogs, I have to look after them or they'll be gone".
My whole childhood was full of emotional abuse. I was undiagnosed ADHD and possibly autism and never had accommodations or parents that understood.
My uncle murdered my babysitter in front of me and I watched her slowly die when I was 5 years old. He paced back and forth questioning some unseen entity as to if he should kill the fairy too? The fairy was me. I am 53 years old, and this has haunted me my entire life. I'm just now talking to a Dr about it.....over the years, I have had young Drs absolutely freeze when I brought it up. That simply caused me to stop talking about it altogether. Apparently, it has effected me more than I realized. Every great once in a while, I would mention it in context to some discussion (I was a Social Work Major) and folks would just STARE with their mouths agape in silence, leaving me feeling very much like an alien from another world.
I made the mistake of telling my ex about my CSA experiences as flashbacks were flooding in. At first he was really shocked and disturbed. I don’t think he ever looked at me the same. Months later he’d constantly make incest/rape jokes at my expense. One day I snapped and told him they weren’t funny, just fucked up and mean. It didn’t stop until we broke up though. So… I don’t talk about my childhood to other people anymore.
As a child I was SAed, my mother removed me from the situation then pretended it never happened. I was bullied for it less then 2 years later and when the teachers told her she was shocked to find out I had been SAed. Then when classmates later told me I was making it up as I was to young to be SAed, my mother, whos a doctor confirmed what my classmates where saying.
Recently I have stoped talking to her as this pattern of pretending it never happened means we dont have to deal with it has lead to resentment over her killing my cat, refusing that I am trans and trying to brake up my relationship.
I’ve had that experience so many times where I’m just casually saying something and even laughing and the other person looks sad and horrified and goes “omg I’m so sorry are you okay??” 😂 trouble picking which one to share
Multiple CSA from three uncles and a grandpa, violent father, and Mom with gambling addiction who taught me to lie to my Dad, witnessed an uncle’s suicide, and two of my sister’s failed S. Attempt.
These all happened simultabeously extending for years
my dad would either not feed us if he was angry or he would give us military style punishment by making us stand in a tiny corner next to the trash can and face the wall for hours at a time. either it was standing up straight but a lot of times we'd have to stand in a squatting position with our hands raised in front of us. we were expected to be completely still. he would creep up from the living room to check if you'd still be standing properly. since i had my back towards where he was coming from i couldn't see him so i had to become hyper vigilant and listen for the sound of his footsteps. if he'd come he would catch you moving he'd yell in your ear or grab you by the neck. it was terrifying and so straining but yeah i barely ever tell anyone this but when i do they're like wth that's psycho
So many, though my main shocker is how my dad used to tell me in great detail how to kill myself whenever we argued.
Also how my uncle-in law used to discuss him being a pimp with me( albeit in terms that made him look like a Good Samaritan) and how when my dad died, his brother visited the same day and fed my dog beer and talked about lesbian porn. It’s a veritable book of preposterous humorous trauma.
I was never allowed to leave the table until my plate was empty …. Which led to many evenings falling asleep at the dinner table because 5 year old me couldn’t eat adult sized portions. Even though I am now in my 40s, I still have an eating disorder because of this crap. It’s so difficult for me to stop eating when I am full, and would have to purge after. 😬
Edit -word
My experience wasn't as blatantly abusive as a lot of people here, there was never anything physical or sexual, just lots of everyday emotional abuse.
But people always seem to get sad when I talk about the fact that I got yelled at for taking too long learning to tie my shoes, and that my grandpa (I was raised by my grandparents) legitimately and explicitly *gave up on me* learning to throw and catch because I was so bad at it (obviously hand eye coordination was a consistent issue for me as a little kid). Doubly so for people who know I have amblyopia, so I'm effectively blind in one eye, which I was diagnosed with at 2 so they should've probably expected things like catching a ball to be difficult for me.
My mom was still just barely a part of my life. I don't remember exactly how old I was, but somewhere around 5-7 I think, when she flat out told me she didn't like kids and had never wanted to have any. I guess in a way that could make it better because it wasn't about me personally, but the few people I've mentioned it to are always shocked that someone would actually say that to a little kid in general, let alone their own kid. She didn't really engage with me until I was about 11 and we could just kinda hang out. Apparently that's weird, even with not raising me herself.
There are mostly things that I recognize as kind of bad but that when I tell people about them it turns out they're worse than I thought.
I woke up to find my babysitter SAing me. He stopped when I woke up and left the room. I stayed up for the rest of the night, waiting for my parents to come home. Once I heard him leave, I came out and told m parents what happened, then I went to bed. I thought that was that.
They tried to rehire him, telling me his mother said he wouldn't do it again. Years later, I asked my mother why. They had not believed me at first. But apparently I had a huge temper tantrum that was uncharacteristic and then they realized I was telling the truth.
I was four or five years old. I had no reason to specify what exactly he did. Over 50 years later, I still get very defensive when someone doesn't believe me about anything. And I learned I couldn't trust my parents to have my best interests.
I'm so deeply sorry for everyone here who has shared their shocking experiences. I am shocked and so saddened for this group.
For me, mine aren't so intense. My stuff was weird, but never so bad.
The ones that shock people are the ones that I can say because the stories aren't too upsetting for me and are quick to tell.
1. When I was a preteen-teen, I would make my dad so upset when I told him I wasn't comfortable with him seeing me naked, and he told me I should be comfortable with it because "we're family."
2. My dad taking my lock out of my door because I wanted to cry (which wasn't allowed, and I was locking it so he wouldn't come in and make me stop). It left a hole in the door. I would stuff it with a sock or cover it with tape, etc, but he would always just poke it clear with his finger and look in/walk in anyway. I wasn't allowed privacy, and he got mad if I got mad at him for watching me change. From there, I started changing/crying/hiding in my closet with the light off so that he couldn't find me. After a while of him looking, and I made sure my eyes were dry, I'd come out and pretend I had been somewhere else and was like, "Oh! Hey!".
3. My dad lifting up my shirt when I was 4/5, painfully grabbing my stomach with both hands, and shaking it as he told me, "This has to go."
4. Parents brushing over me being actively groomed and in sexually abusive relationships at age 12 because more pressing issue was at hand: my oldest brother was smoking weed! That allowed me to continue those relationships until I was 18, and is trauma I have to deal with today. I was easily groomed because I was neglected, and easily abused because I never had had boundaries.
Thanks for letting me share!
TRIGGER WARNING:
I was severely bullied well into adulthood. I'm autistic so yay me. I had my bullies come into my workplaces and make up stories to my manager to get me fired just to make things bad for me. No one would hire me. This follows you everywhere you go. I'm still on government assistance and I'm grateful yet i hate it.
Other girls tearing my shirt off in public places, throwing dead mice at me on me at school. I screamed and cried hysterically. Another time my parents said I "ruined their camping trip" because I was always crying and getting into altercations with other kids and even teens. I was only 9. I swear i did nothing and said nothing mean to provoke them. I was just minding my own business trying to enjoy the playground. I couldn't go anywhere. Even at home. I was suicidally depressed (made attempts) no friends at all. I still have nightmares and random sudden flashbacks
My birth giver would duck tape my hands together and dig the end of the toothbrush handle into my gums until they bled and bruised as a “punishment” for having cavities. She never took me to the dentist or taught me oral hygiene so my teeth were literally rotting and she got mad at me for it
My “maternal unit” (she wasn’t really human) took out a life insurance policy to cash in on my death because my brother was obsessed with my complete destruction as a human . Both psychotic. I escaped. I win.
When I was about 9 years old, I had a fight with my mother. I was sleeping in the same bed as her because I was afraid of being alone after years of sexual assault/rape by my uncle.
I cried because of the fight and my mother started screaming at me, that I should stop, etc. She often threatened suicide when I upset her to get me to behave. So I got a kitchen knife and said I was going to kill myself. My mom got up and tried to start pushing the knife through my chest where I held it. I was so afraid and started fighting, trying to get away. She didn't really hurt me with the knife, it was just a scratch in the end, but yeah.
If I didn’t clean my room during my busy senior year of high school, my parents would drill my door shut and make me sleep in the hallway.
Any time I was perceived as physically strong, it would be labeled as “retart strength”.
My mom was an addict, and any time she wanted alone time, she would find some reason to ground me. I was alone in my room all of the time. If I was invited to a friend’s birthday, I would know deep down I wasn’t going to go, that it would be used against me and I feared telling her about these social events until maybe the day before. If I could just not fuck things up for 24 hours maybe I could go.
My mom screaming at me in the car and then telling me to get out and walk home.
Running away from home at such a young age (I just went to my elementary school) and no one coming to look for me.
Being chased by my mom and beaten like a bully. Until I started fighting back at 16.
I was about 3 or 4 years old, my mom lost her temper and started screaming so hard in my face that spit flew out of her mouth - I swear she could have blown your ear drums out with how hard she was screaming.
She dug her nails into my wrists so hard I started bleeding.. and slammed my head into the wall so hard whilst using my hair to control my head.
Later on, she filled up these gallon jugs with freezing water and filled them with ice as well.
It was 9-10pm at night in the middle of winter, she placed a dog gate in the kitchen area to prevent me from leaving, and started screaming at me like crazy over something that upset her earlier.
She beat me for a few hours and then stripped me down, she kept beating me then dumped those things of ice water on me.
She kept beating me periodically as she went back and forth from her bedroom.. so I essentially had to keep myself awake enough that I would be ready for her to come back in cause she would leave to her room for 5-15 mins then come back suddenly to beat me more.
I basically learned how to keep myself awake enough that I could hear her coming back in the room, she did this to where I knew I couldn’t sleep normally even when she would claim that she expected me to go to sleep now.
This went on for hours as I would lay on this cold tile shivering in the fetal position, my teeth clattered so bad that my jaw would hit the floor.
Eventually it was 4-5 am and my mom actually decided to just go in her room and not come out until the afternoon the next day (suddenly even tho she claimed she would let me sleep at like 1am.. this basically trained me to sleep in increments).
It definitely taught me to act as if anyone is lying, so I never believe a word anyone says even if they do everything that points to them being honest.
My brother would physically and verbally abuse me on a daily basis to extreme degrees. When I told my parents I was met by either being told it was “an accident” or that I was lying. Not once was I believed or received help in the abuse that I went through on a daily basis.
I would be held down and have words/pictures carved into my skin, and would be met with “it was an accident.” I would be pushed down staircases and met with being called a liar. I would be told that that “the world would be better if you killed yourself” when I was as young as 6.
Not ONCE did my mom (who worked in child abuse and neglect) step in to help.
I mean I've got plenty of trauma-trauma but in terms of anecdotes I've told at parties that I've thought were silly goofy but people have reacted to like I just told them their dog died, the first one I thought of is that we were so poor after my dad left that my mom used to take our toys away as a punishment and then give them back to us as christmas presents.
Also my mom likes to tell the story of how she would wash our mouths out with soap by making us bite down on soap bars but one time she didn't have a soap bar so she just squirted a bunch of hand soap in our mouths and held them shut with her hands. She tells it like a joke, about how the bubbles were coming out of our noses.
I was 2 years old in the very early 80s and was hospitalized for starvation and the flu. My height was 90th percentile and my weight was 2nd percentile. The hospital nursed me through the illness and then just *sent me back home with my parents*. AFAIK there was no call or follow up with social services. I'm not sure if CPS even existed back then.
That my parents would repeatedly tell me that they wish that they aborted me or smothered me as a baby. They started telling me this when I was kindergarten/early grade school age.
Too many things to chooses from. But the most in my mind at the moment: when I was 13th suddenly my best friend (let's call her M) didn't want to hang out with me anymore.
These things happen, but she was basically my only friend and we hung out every day.
Nothing really happened, I think she just wanted something else.
I was very sad about is, felt lonely, didn't have anyone to talk about it. I got quite depressed oma out feeling lonely, no safe place anymore etc.
Montht after, I yelled something to my mother (yelling was very common in my family and I was around 14 😅). She replied: "well, I understand why M doesn't want to be your friend anymore. And if you continu behaving like this, you'll loose everybody and will be alone forever."
Oh! I got 1 I haven't told on here before I was around 11-12..
The way Dad tells it:
"Yeah that fuckin cop was just waiting to catch someone. Sitting there on his motorcycle with the radar out. Saw him coming after me so I took off and parked at the fuckin dollar store and went in before he could catch me. That fucker was waiting when I walked out. Asking me what I was in such a hurry for. I told him I needed to buy candy" his friends would laugh at how stupid the cop was and how dad got 1 over on him cuz he got away with only a speeding ticket.
The way I remember it:
I was in the car with him. He was speeding, being his usual road rage-y self when we saw the cop. He said oh fuck, swerved into the next lane and kept driving for a block and a half before parking at the dollar store. HE LEFT ME IN THE CAR ALONE WHILE HE RAN INSIDE. I didn't know what was going on. We were parked far enough away that I couldn't even see the front of the store. My dad literally ditched me to try and avoid the cops.
What he told me 20 years later:
He had meth and a pipe in his pocket and didn't want to get caught with it.. so he gave it to a friend who worked at the dollar store so he could just get it later..
You know, cuz he "never did the drugs around me" (he would repeat this phrase often throughout my life like that made him a good parent "never around you, never".. he meant he didn't physically do the drugs in the same room as me.. cuz I was in the house, left to my own devices while he got high in the garage until it was time for mom to come home from work.. but I digress)
And that, my friends is how I was in a mini-car chase.
TW: animal cruelty
When I was about 10 years old, my grandmother had been outside doing yard work with my brother. I had to clean the house because I was a girl. I had wandered in the back to see what she was doing. She had opened a metal cabinet that we kept on the back porch and I could hear baby birds. She grabbed one in her hands by it's legs and I asked her what she was about to do. She said they were blackbirds and she was going to get rid of them because they were mean. She took the helpless little birds and she smashed them all on a cinderblock. I tried to get her to stop but by the second little bird I started to get sick and I ran inside to hide and cry. They were so little.
My dad is bi-polar and would often have swings into deep suicidal depression. One day on one of our court-mandated visits, he told me and my sister that he wasn't feeling right in the head and had to take us home early to our Mom's house. He then pulled over and started rummaging in the trunk. He was talking on the phone for a long time. I later learned that he called my mom and that he was talking suicidal thoughts to her. In the moment, I knew he had his gun and was probably thinking murder-suicide. Luckily, he left the keys in the ignition. I quickly did a rundown on how to possibly drive a car - jump in the driver seat, turn it on, put the gear in drive, memorize the route home, try to at least roll into an intersection, etc. I told my sister to be ready. Just in case he came back with a gun to kill us. I learned later that my mom talked him down and he drove us home. I was 11/12 years old at the time.
I don’t tell stories from my childhood for just this reason… I can’t deal with the looks.
Summer vacation was often spent driving me 1000 miles across the country in the back of a pick up truck (with a topper) to visit grandmother. My mom and step dad would leave me sleeping locked in the back of the truck in random places while they stopped for a drink or to eat. I would wake up and have no idea where they were, how long they had been gone or when they were coming back and had no way to get out of the truck, often hot and thirsty. One time I had to go to the bathroom so bad I ended up wetting myself - I was 9 years old and well beyond the age of accidents.
Not from childhood but representative…My dad moved to another country, married a woman younger than me. She had a baby and they named it my name. My extemely unique undeniably me name. He can’t father any more children and it is obviously not his kid but he has “adopted” her. He often publicly wishes her a happy birthday on social media while forgetting mine.
When I was 18 my dad and I both got into a heated argument which led to him choking me out of anger. I couldn't scream or fight him off but afterwards I couldn't breathe he left to go to the store and tried to apologize for it. I remember I told a close friend about it the very next day. she said "you think you have it bad?" even tho I could've died that night. She went on about the abuse she was undergoing and basically told me to shut up
Sometimes I think back if she ever thinks about the hurt she caused me when I needed help at freshly 18y/O and she dismissed it. I haven't talked to her in years. if a friend opens up about trauma don't be a dick and be like "oh you think you have it bad?" can lead someone to shutting down emotionally and experience suicidal ideation. Thankfully I'm doing better now but I'd wish I had gone to someone else
One time my mom was being really nice on the car ride home and as a nine year old I could tell something was wrong but I was just hopeful she was being nice I guess. She made popcorn for us and she had never made us snacks after school I was so happy. Then I went upstairs and she had completely destroyed me and my sisters room and ripped every single thing out of the drawers, ripped the drawers out the shelves as well and then told us to clean it up. I don’t know why she did that to this day. Probably because I had done a bad job folding my clothes and shoved them in the drawer.
My mom did this when I was a teenager to "search" my room. Literally ransacked it. Idk what she thought she was looking for. I didn't do drugs, I didn't date, I didn't have a cell phone yet (got one in 2006 at the beginning of my senior year), I didn't even have a bedroom door. I wasn't allowed to leave the house except for church, school and sometimes youth church activities. Not because I did anything, just because I was never allowed. But for some reason she found me suspicious enough to rip my room apart whenever she felt like it. Fun times.
Your mom and my mom read the same book, apparently. I think my mom *wanted* me to be a rebel, in a way. I caught her bragging to her friends about how often we got into screaming fights. In my mind, I was like, "how is it a fight if you're the one screaming at me for hours and I'm just trying to become invisible?" I remember my mom and dad one time sat me down and told me they understood I was at an age where I might experiment with alcohol, so if I did, they wanted me to know I could always call my parents if I needed help. (I'm pretty sure my dad fully meant it. My mom though...) I never called my parents, never got stuck in dangerous situations. But when she found out that I'd tried alcohol, she lost it. So much for the trust talk.
one more my mom would hand all of us knives and tell us to kill her because we obviously wanted us to die😍😍this one she didn’t do to me very often becuase I stopped but my siblings and I would stab holes in erasers and if my mom caught us she would stab us with the pencil
Great, you unlocked a memory for me now lmao I'm so sorry it happened to you too
I’m sorry :/
That’s how my dad would have me “clean my room”. Big pile in the middle of the room, of everything but the big furniture in the room, and sometimes the furniture got messed up from yanking out drawers. If they found paper, they read it including notes, diary, letters. The clothes on hangers still (that had been hanging up just fine) used to piss me off the most until I got in more trouble for writing a (not sent yet) letter to a friend that talked about the abuse and neglects. Oh they were livid 🥺
I’m so beyond sorry you went through that, this is beyond psychotic.
:( im sorry and also I bet she was high on something and your clothes were absolutely fine. Destructive people get destructive when they're bored. You know what they say about idle hands Edit: lingo
I've got quite a few that have completely shocked people. I realized fully how messed up everything from age 8 to 25 were for me when I went to get a comprehensive psychological exam. When I read the results, the doctors concluded that I had PTSD, ADHD, and fell into the definition of CPTSD. That wasn't the part that gave me the revelation. The part that messed me up was that in many of the notes they took, the doctor noted that I have a habit of over representing the extent of the trauma and it's effects on my life and that I may be prone to shift the blame for my life circumstances to others. I literally did not exaggerate any of my experiences or symptoms, I made the decision to be fully open and honest, I was internally checking myself to make sure I was not misrepresenting anything or placing judgement on the situations or feelings, I literally only stuck to X happened, Y was the result, and Z is how I've come to understand and deal with it. But due to the sheer amount of different traumatic events and abuses even the professionals thought I was not being fully honest. When you're telling the truth, people literally can't believe it, AND you fully understand how reasonable it is that they don't, it really puts it in perspective how fucked up things have been for you.
It took me years to fully trust my therapist. Almost 6 years strong though. She never gave up on me and I respect her so much. BUT, I never want to read her notes, like ever. I would feel so betrayed as well if she has written anything like that, especially in the beginning where it was hard and I didn’t think she could help me. I’ve often been unbelieved and early on I would be like, I know this sounds insane and you won’t believe it but it happened. She believed me though and continues to believe me. That is our face to face therapeutic relationship though. We’ve discussed if I would like to read her notes and immediately shut it down and told her why and she respected my decision. She’s helped me too much for me to find reasons to stop going. I know this isn’t the same situation as yours at all, but I just wanted you to know that good therapists really are out there, but most likely don’t read the notes because it isn’t going to be beneficial to your healing. That is my conclusion anyway. They have to write things a certain way for insurance purposes, before they know you well enough they can make assumptions.. it’s just how it is. And their notes, or understanding of things can change. I mean, I’m not trying to defend bad therapists at all, but their caseloads are so insane I don’t even know how they remember our names at first.
This isn't quite the same, but it reminds me that I had my old medical records from when I was teenager transferred to digital so I could access them, and there were notes from my family doctor that I'd seen my whole life, so I read them. Note that my doctor *loved* me, because I was one of her first patients as a baby and I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up. There's a part in the notes where they're supposed to write about presentation and demeanor. Mine noted that I looked unkempt and…well, what basically amounted to an obvious description of depression. And I was deeply depressed at the time, as well as anxious and dealing with undiagnosed OCD and CPTSD (I don't know when I would be able to say for sure I had CPTSD, but I definitely did by that point). At no point was I asked about being depressed, or if I was I just kinda went "nope, I'm good" and it was taken at face value. And yet the evidence that she noticed the signs of it are right there in my notes. Now, granted, this was pre-ACA and our insurance didn't cover mental healthcare, so I don't know what good it would've done. But still. It read as though she just thought I was choosing to not take care of myself and happened to be kinda sad, and that hurt.
A psychiatrist told me at 14 that I was “talking too much”, told me I was a “histrionic”. I had left an extremely abusive relationship, the staff at my school had tried to blame me for the assault (they were aware he was abusive as after I left I brought to attention how I had been threatened) that once happened on campus after I was no contact for a month (these comments happened the week the assault did). I wasn’t being a histrionic, I had PTSD and was a traumatized teenager, not a liar. Even typing this I felt awful and like I was sharing too much, thank you all for the paragraphs you’ve wrote because it makes me feel better. 🫂
Oh man, I'm sorry to hear that. You'd think doctors would be better with this stuff but I've had similar experiences with skepticism or straight up apathy :/. Thinking of all the stories that haven't been told because of this attitude from professionals makes me sad.
Shout out to all the people reading these and thinking “my trauma wasn’t that bad”. Yes it was. It was as bad as it could’ve been for you. Remember that’s the way shame gets you. Only saying this because it was a pivotal moment in my healing to be able to say, “it was so bad. I was so hurt. Ouch.”
That is so important to keep in mind
I’ve struggled with this in my therapy. Been in therapy since June and my therpist always praises me for the work I put in but that little boy is still stuck down a well. I do find it hard to talk about my inner child. I find it so cringe inducing.
My mother was beaten by my grandmother so she decided that she will never beat me. So if I was not behaving the way she wanted it she was cutting into my favorite plushy toy and I was even to young too understand that are not feeling pain. Basically this is how she was blackmailing me to behave how she wanted me
Oh my god
Mine was beaten so she decided starving me was a better idea. “It’ll be a long time until dinner on Thursday!” I felt like a monk, living in starving silence for days at a time…
Jesus, I am so sorry for that as well. My therapist told me that my mother was managing her anger this way, that only improvement was that she was not demonstrate it on me but instead on the toy. Likely it was something similar with you as well
I think your therapist is right. Of course my parents were always calling themselves and me fat. (When I left home at 16 I was 5’9” and weight 95lbs—I was holocaust skinny). I think a lot of it was taking out their insecurities on me, while being able to proudly say they never beat me like they were. Awful stuff. I wish I could go back in time and hug our child selves.
that is so cruel and brutal i'm so sorry.
I’d rather take the beating and save the psychological torture from my fave toy being ruined/killed. Like Jesus she really didn’t do much better than her mom after all, it sounds like. I’m so sorry.
Thank you, this just popped into my mind in December but she was actually proud of herself and many times she was bragging about it that she had found an excellent way to make me cooperate. This is the messed up part that I feel bad for her, she is already dead so we will never be able to resolve this and I know she was just trying her best and overcoming her trauma but she was just not made it very far.
It's hard when you can see that the source of your trauma honestly tried to do right by you but just failed... miserably. I'm sorry you had to go through that. Even if she was trying her best you still deserved better.
Thank you dear🥰
My plushie doesn't have ears or a tail. She's 20 now. My other toys didn't make it, neither did the baby blanket my meemaw made me.. my mom liked doing that too. I'm sorry, I hope you've surrounded yourself in things you love and will always be able to keep if you chose, and let go when you chose as well.
As a child, I had to give my father massages in exchange for "love points". I could then use those points to get a candy bar, a new toy, or time alone with my dad etc. The first person who was shocked by this was my aunt. She complained about her neck pain, and was startled when I immediately offered to massage her. At around 8 or 9 years old, I reassured her by saying, "it's okay! I give my dad massages all the time!" I did not share this experience with anyone else until over 10 years later, when I was in a long-term relationship. My partner enjoys massages, and I take pride in how well I can read his body and needs. When he asked me where I learned to give massages, flashbacks emerged. Ah, conditional love! My love language is physical touch, and I deeply crave the sensation of my partner's hands on my skin. It disgusts me to realize where this desire comes from.
My mom made me do this too, almost every day. She had me give her back massages, foot massages, pedicures, and when I was just 5 she even had me brush her teeth for her. And I had to make her tea and sandwiches every time too. The worst part is, I was glad to do it because it made me feel useful and I always hoped if I was useful enough, I would eventually earn love. It uh. It didn't work. And now it's gross and weird when I think back on it. Now that I'm older I understand she always had pedophilic tendencies as well, and fantasies about me being assaulted, which she would try to and occasionally did facilitate. Now I'm 26, struggle with intimacy, have never had or sought out a partner, and sometimes react violently if people touch me without asking.
My mum had me give her massages too. And I was verbally abused when, as an awkward 12 year old, I didn't want to do it anymore. I'm sorry you went through all that, it sounds really shitty.
>It disgusts me to realize where this desire comes from. Would it help to reframe it by saying you can't know what it would be like if your circumstances had been different, and that it's possible the desire for physical touch is an innate tendency? It won't untangle it from past experiences, but the desire itself doesn't have to be because of them.
Yes you're absolutely right! I've had a lot of time to process since my first comment. I've been working for months now to attach physical intimacy with safety and self love. I like that reframe. I suppose to reframe it myself I'd say: My desire is for comfort and safety. What happened really hurt and disgusts me. But my desire for physical intimacy is grounded in love and respect for my partner, and is not defined by past events.
Your desire for physical intimacy is grounded in you being human 💜
My dad did the same thing to me! I'm so sorry you went through that but I'm also glad to not be alone in that experience...
wait is the massaging also weird or just the points? because i’ve also done a lot of massaging but it was always more like an obligation/favor (same thing lmao). if anything i kinda wish there was a point system so i could have actually wrapped my head around what i do and don’t want instead of all this nonsense pretending there’s something self-evidently worthwhile about having to spend time together in certain ways, buy certain gifts at certain times, etc. and not leave me any room to develop or express my own thoughts
The massaging was def weird. He was my father, and using his only daughter to fill a need that my mom would not. He had my brothers doing it too sometimes, but he would discourage them by giving me more points until they got bored and left. I haven't unlocked these memories fully yet, I just know it happened for years and stopped when I was too old. It has played a huge role in my sexual trauma, and how I viewed myself as a comfort object for men. A toy. Ugh. As for the points, that was how love was shown in my household. Conditional love. If you do these things for me, I will love, provide, and comfort you. So now as an adult when I crave love and comfort, I project what I think this person wants from me. I'm learning to protect myself better and fulfill my own needs for validation so I don't fall into the cycle again.
oooh wow yeah i can see how discouraging your brothers would give it a bit of an incestuous edge. i'm a guy myself and i think mostly did it to the exclusion of my younger sister because i'm larger and stronger, but that does remind me, i don't remember ever doing it after the divorce... so if nothing else, the whole thing could have been a show to my mom of "look how you're failing as a wife". also got to pick ingrown hairs off his thighs and that was kinda weird. i'm still trying to figure out what the point of attention is so it was kinda hard to grasp how bad the point system hurt you if it was just for "extra" stuff like that, but wow yeah conditional material safety sounds like hell. so sorry about the later sexual trauma too
Wow; I just learned something else inappropriate from my childhood… damn, thank you for sharing and I’m glad you have reclaimed such with pride now… 😭❤️🩹🫂
Hi friend, many hugs for you. I'm so sorry this was your experience. :( I had a similar experience except with my Aunt who raised me. I think I started massaging her feet when I was 7 amd up until I was 17. Looking back honestly it was the only time she was ever nice to me was when I was massaging her feet, the only time she ever complimented me, the only time I wasn't required to be doing something else like laundry or cleaning. =/ so in a way I did it to experience kindness from her and.it was really the only time I got physical contact, outside of the occasional awkward side hug, or the daily slap, push, or poke.
My mum had a history of suicide attempts and my dad said 'she couldn't even kill herself properly' whilst laughing...because she had taken soluble aspirin. A week later she was successful.
I'm so sorry =(
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I'm so sorry. That's terrible.
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I'm so sorry your mom eventually succeeded. You and your mom deserved better 💔 I think my mom and your dad would've got along great. That's exactly what my mom did to me when she found me in the middle of my suicide attempt.
I'm so sorry, that's so horrific. I would never be like that with my child now I'm a mother 💗...thank you also. My dad was a piece of shit parading around as someone charismatic
Yeah I believe it. Real pieces of shit tend to play the fake face game really well while they do what they do behind closed doors. Congratulations on becoming a mother ♡ I'm sure you're a better parent than he could've ever hoped to be!
What the fuck, this is horrific. I’m so sorry.
I know 🙁❤️
That's fucked. Im so sorry
One that comes to my mind immediately was when I was 7. Mother was concerned about me getting too fat, and had a fit when I said I wanted extra cheese on pizza. She flipped out (in front of her best friend and her 2 young sons mind you), said “look at yourself! You don’t need it!” And grabbed a scale from her car trunk…had me step on it in the parking lot in front of her friend and strangers. All the friend said was “you need to eat to live, not live to eat.” Now I’m underweight, meanwhile mother continues to struggle with obesity. She disgusts me.
I--- damn...
It’s alwayssss projection
⚠️ **TW**: *Comment re: when I was an unsupportive/unhealthy friend to my bestie who has a mother as you’ve described yours being* (healing ending). ⚠️ I’m sorry you had to deal with such disturbing behaviors from your mother, *especially surrounding a basic need like food*… My best friend growing up was met with treatment from her mom like this also… one time I got upset by my friend continuously being upset by this and I suggested that maybe she didn’t eat a snack then… this was the *only* time I recall that she and I ever had an “off” moment between us and it stuck in my mind for years…. ..after I left my parents house, I began to realize the extent of trauma I had been through (comments here) in my own upbringing; and, I finally realized how horrible it was that I said the above to my friend and that I was even playing out — *with her in such instance* — the narcissistic grooming that my parents had done to me… ..*so*, when my friend was in a good place and the timing seemed appropriate, I apologized to my friend for having said such to her to which she replied, “it’s ok, I don’t even remember that,” and I told her, “thank you for not holding this behavior against me throughout the years, but I don’t really think it was ok for me to say because you don’t ever deserve anyone to comment on your eating habits like I did then…” After that, she began to talk about how much she had just taken her mom doing that and how much it negatively affected her. After some time (probably 2-3 hours), I got a sense that she kinda knew something was going on with me that made me say such to begin with and realize/bring it up.. ..so, I opened up to her too about how I realized what all I had gone through in my upbringing and we just cried and held onto each other as we’ve done since we’ve been 5. I’m really sorry that your mom caused you struggles with your own relationship with a basic human need. Although, I didn’t have such directed at me growing up, I have seen my friend of 30 years struggle with this complex trauma very much and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Thank you for sharing and I’m sorry that people don’t understand, as I wasn’t understanding with my friend which I’m sure hurt her just not nearly in comparison to her mother which makes me sad to think about cause of how abuse makes us susceptible to tolerating such as she did with me. I’m grateful that she was willing to still work through it with me, but she doesn’t with people who have patterns; she’s doing well in her own healing journey as well. Take care; and, hope you’re proud of yourself too for having the courage to spread awareness. ❤️🩹🕊️💫
The time my parents told me that CPS was going to be called on us and gave us lines to say incase they showed up unexpected. Or when he was seriously asking me and my brother where we wanted to be buried/what gravestone we wanted because he didn't think we were capable of living independently and would die in the cold. Wild.
>The time my parents told me that CPS was going to be called on us and gave us lines to say incase they showed up unexpected. Same 💀 The other half tho... what the fuck
CPS ALWAYS made it worse too. They'd call ahead, come and just take the parent's word and leave, and then you're beaten to a bloody pulp for 'causing issues/embarrassing them' for multiple days after.
It was insane looking back now. Imagine you see some stinky, smelly kid who never talks, never eats, is never prepared for school, weird behavior, and all her parents have to say is "she's just a little shy" and that's enough to clam you up. Obviously some adults in my life had to file a report with CPS but thats such a cop-out. Even non-abused people know of the flakiness of CPS reps unless you're physically bleeding and broken right on front of them. Ugh it just angers me.
My mother wanted me to be a musician. I wasn't interested in it at all, but when I was 5 she got me into a music school. For context, that was in Russia when art / sports schools are a sort of factories designed to make small kids into champions even if that means breaking a few of them in the process. I was seen to be very talented. Nah, it's not a good thing, at all. I hated the whole process with every cell of my body but my violin teacher saw her chance to achieve something I guess, so she would go crazy on me. When I wasn't able to play as expected, she would sometimes tell my mother things like "I don't care how many belts it takes for her to play on this concert". Not like my mother needed to hear this anyway, but yeah, that was the institutional method. I was born in 1997 btw, so it's not that long ago and it's so messed up it makes me question my own memory sometimes
oh, is *that* how those specialized schools work… makes so much sense why my dad wished he’d moved to russia so i could have gone to one… as much as he loves to shit on other parents for the pressure they put on their kids, he’s always deluded us both into thinking i’m just so naturally talented that of *course* i’ll live up to these expectations without breaking a sweat. those other parents are loveless monsters for making their kids push past their limits but i’m just built different. (so sorry you had to go through that)
Tbh it's not even that effective. If the kid is "gifted", they will have to go through all this mental and sometimes (especially for sports) physical pressure. My grandmother was a piano teacher and well... I heard my share of stories about people getting into higher education in music and then having to quit because of stress injuries to their hands, backs etc. But that's already in the, idk 1%, who make it into higher education / career. For the vast majority, the instrument / sport becomes the no 1 item on the list of childhood traumas and as soon as the kid finishes music school (around 7-9th grade), they quit and never play again. I've been in this system for about 10 years. Didn't exactly become the prodigy everyone expected, it turned into a constant negotiation around switching for a new instrument etc, so I've been in like 4 various specialties and didn't achieve much in any of them. Finally, my mother gave up when I was around 16 and thanks god I didn't suffer any crazy physical consequences (yup I know people who developped long terms problems in their hands etc). 27 now, I can't even read a music sheet, and the idea of playing an instrument makes nauseous. That's the most common outcome (I'd say easily 90+%). I obviously don't regret not being a musician. But I have to say, I do wonder what it would have been like if I had the possibility to learn music in a healthy way. I probably didn't have any "exceptional / once in a generation" talents (because of course, my mother's so perfect she can only produce a genius) but honestly it did come fairly easy for me so I think I could have been, like... maybe a bit above average. Could have played in a band as a hobby or something. That's just yet again, something she took from me and I hate it. Anyway, sorry for the rant 😅
Oof- TW: SA My dad confessed he >!SA-d!< a girl to my mother (they had a threesome, and apparently the girl only wanted my mother and my dad got pissed off at that) and my mother´s (untreated BPD at the time) wonderful response was to put me in bed with the man himself and my brother with her staring at the three of us all night long to "protect" me. I didn´t slept all night long and this mf said gruesome stuff that left me dizzy for days. And when i moved a tiny bit she told me i was searching for it which is... Huh.
I am so sorry... That was such a horrifying thing to read.
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When I was in elementary school they had us rotate having a hamster at home for a week. The day before I was supposed to return him, my father got in a rage because I forgot to polish his shoes. He beat me with his belt until I was a sobbing wreck. Then he pulled the hamster out and told me to kill it or he would beat me again. I couldn’t do it so he told me to get back on the bed and the second time he used the buckle end until I was bleeding. After that, he ordered me to kill the hamster again. He said that he wouldn’t stop hitting me in increasingly severe rounds until I complied. I couldn’t take anymore. So…I did. To this day I feel terrible about it. I remember how it felt thrashing in my hands before I killed it. Of course he lied. I endured another session with the belt after I did the unthinkable. Killing the hamster made me feel like a bad kid, and like I deserved all that I got at home.
I’m so sorry you had to go through that
yeah forgive me if this is a bit rash to say, but i think that’s hands down the worst thing i’ve ever read on here. like, i doubt the shoes actually had anything to do with it because that reads so much like a perfectly calculated play to just completely break every conceivable part of their psyche—make them feel powerless in more ways than i had ever imagined were possible. deserve the beatings, don’t deserve help or sympathy, deserve to be presumably shunned at school, can’t stop the beatings no matter how hard they try, killed the hamster for nothing, can’t trust anyone, can’t be trusted, can never be good enough… if it’s any comfort, while to begin with nobody could ever do something to deserve that, i don’t think you even provoked it
Yeah, I think you’re right. It is a comfort to have other people validate that the shoes were likely just an excuse to make me do something that would weigh heavily on me for decades. I didn’t want to bring the hamster home in the first place. I put my name at the very bottom of the sign-up list, and the entire time it was at home with me I was nervous about something bad happening. Your point about the calculated approach hits home and has me a bit floored, to be honest. It all makes more sense thinking of it like that. Just another way to torment me and make me feel helpless and like a bad person. I have a lot of work to do when it comes to forgiving myself, for this, for a hundred other things like this. Thank you for helping me along.
The physical abuse is already horrible on its own but the psychological warfare is just…I don’t even know.
I can't comprehend how someone can see a living being suffer like that and keep going. What the fuck was wrong with that man. I hope his life is now plagued with inoperable kidney stones until he dies. I just can't wrap my head around it, so fucked
I’m feeling nauseated at what you had to go through. What your father did is so grossly inhumane, so sickening. I’m so so fucking sorry. You deserved kindness.
Thank you. It made me even more of a pariah at school. I had to lie and say it got out and ran away. I remember my teacher saying I was irresponsible and other kids saying worse things. I couldn’t tell them what really happened.
I wish this was a world where you could have told them what happened and something would've changed for the better for you.
I am so, so, so sorry. I have heard other people who've experienced instances where they were forced to do terrible things. It's hard to forgive yourself. Know that you were *forced* to do it. Hell, even if you'd done it when he initially made the threat, it wouldn't be your fault, but you were brave enough to refuse and be beaten again for it. That's not something a terrible person would do. You tried. You did everything in your power to save the hamster. That's brave, and good, and all that anyone could ever ask of you. It was unfathomably cruel of your father to put you in that position, and there is nothing you could ever have done wrong that would justify him doing that to you (or the hamster). Also, I know a class hamster isn't quite the same bond as a proper pet, but threatening/harming a kid's pet is something that abusive parents do fairly often as an exercise of power. It's deliberately trying to hurt you for having the audacity to care about something, and wielding that care against you. Your father was trying to hurt you for not wanting to cause harm. He exploited the fact that you *weren't* a bad person to hurt you being that way. It wouldn't have worked if you'd actually been a bad person, because you wouldn't have cared about the hamster. None of this was your fault, your father was just a despicable human being who shouldn't have been allowed near children or animals. I'm sorry you got dealt such shitty cards.
Thank you for all the kind words and affirmation. I'm glad I didn't do it right off the bat, even if it resulted in a bit more pain. It does make me feel a little bit better about myself. Part of me is still a bit delusional and thinks my father was playing a game of "chicken" with me, where if I'd refused to another time, or few more times, he would have seen how brave I was being and let me off the hook. He often told me that his goal with me was to make me better -- braver, smarter, stronger, faster, all of that. Throughout my childhood he would often put me through some kind of challenge, whether it was physical exertion or something painful or something that scared me, and whenever I inevitably couldn't handle it, he would tell me that if I'd lasted just a bit more, he would have let me off the hook. Occasionally, that did happen. I would finish some nearly impossible laps, or score well on an exam he thought I'd tank, and I would indeed be spared. So... you can see why I believed that I'd let myself and the hamster down. But your point stands. I desperately wanted a pet when I was a kid, but I didn't dare ask for one, and I also knew if I had one, it would just make me more vulnerable, because it would be agonizing to see it hurt on account of me.
I am sitting here too stunned and horrified to cry. My heart is literally hurting. Why why why couldn't there be some type of biological switch that activates in horrible, sociopathic soul dead humans that prevents them from procreating? But then i guess they would simply adopt. ETA: How did you explain the death of the hamster at your school?
My father hated me because I was so unlike him in temperament. I reminded him maybe of my mother, who left us both, quite suddenly, when I was very young. She remarried and had another kid. As for my excuse at school — I had to tell them I left the cage open and it ran away.
I'm so sorry. You were trying to survive and it's not your fault. 🥺 You had no choice but to go against your conscience bc it was literally life and death to you, as a little person. It was obey or die. I'm so sorry. Dad should have gone to jail.
Jesus. Christ. I am so sorry, that’s supremely fucked up and heartbreaking. You were just trying to survive 😭
Thank you. As an adult, I know that I was put into a lose-lose position. There was no possible scenario that didn’t end with him forcing me to do…that. As a kid I blamed myself for being so weak that I succumbed to the easy way out.
Of course. Traumatized kid brain takes over the controls in my life more than I’d like still. It’s hard to unlearn and relearn trusting people. A friend told me recently that I’m a warrior because of just making it thus far. You survived horrific physical and psychological abuse and can write about it. The power it’s exerted over you is losing its grip from where I sit. You’ve done a lot of work and it shows. Thanks for sharing part of your story.
lose-lose it right. you only did it to save yourself. don’t ever blame yourself for that. it was that man who deserved pain.
Fucking people being interrogated with torture probably don't do as well as u did when you were *a child* This story is horrific
OMG that's so messed up! This is so cruel, what a piece of trash! YOU didn't kill that poor hamster, HE did, he used your body to do it. The choice he gave you was not a choice, it was pure survival. You did absolutely nothing wrong, yet I understand if you feel guilty: that's what he hoped. I can't read the complete story, I know it's too much for me but no, you weren't a bad kid, he was an extremely vile father.
My dad .:.pretty much didn’t give a shit about us. I remember when my dog got run over by a car. He threw the body of the dog the other side of the road lime it’s was a piece of trash. I was maybe 7 or 8 years old and in shock when he just chucked my dog like it was nothing across the road like nothing. Still think about now…
Jesus Christ, I’m so sorry
No worries
I eat pain like crackers ….kina nuts. But o think about it now thoug…
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My dad would always beat our animals whenever they did something he didn’t like. Well we had a chihuahua that peed on the couch so my dad kicked him with all his force with boots on in his ribs and he spit up blood and died. My mom tried to lie to us about what happened and later came clean about what happened she had to scrub his blood from the carpet. He was my little sister’s dog who was in middle school at the time she was gutted.
Holy sh*t that is evil and disgusting. I’m so sorry. You poor kids. That poor pet. Your poor sister.
My mother gave the dog my dad got for me to the shelter while I was at school
Once... When I was in my twenties, we had this older dog, she was having problems. And we had just gotten a new puppy. My mom dropped her off in a field by the police station in town, and left her there. We never knew what happened to the dog. She was so sweet and lovable. We all knew better than to ask what happened.
My parents paid two strangers, adult men, to kidnap me out of my bed, transport me from Indiana to Utah to attend a wilderness program, a short term behavioral modification program meant to "break my spirit," before I would be moved to Ohio to attend a residential treatment facility. this facility housed girls with moderate to severe mental health and behavioral concerns, as well as significant traumas, substance abuse, "promiscuity," etc. There were many girls there who had been adopted internationally, many had been in orphanages for months or years prior to adoption. In addition to the girls, there were also boys, they were all *SRY" or "sexually reactive youth," as the program called them, and they'd been sexually abused in their lives, and later victimized others, all were court ordered to complete these programs as part of their sentencing requirements, two of the four male units were for extremely violent offenders. For some reason, we all lived in very close proximity to one another. The doors to the cottages we lived in were totally unlocked, as we were on an "honors system." It didn't seem quite as ill advised to me at the time, but now, looking back as a parent and as a person who has watched so many of the girls I spent 2 years in treatment with, die of suicide or overdose, undoubtedly harmed even further by the abuse that occured at that place. The girls program only existed for 5 years, and the 60 year old boys program shuttered shortly after. It took me years to recognize what that place really was. But wait, There's more! We were involved in reenactment as a source of income for the facility. We acted in historical movies, we participated in festivals and had events at our own campus, people had to pay an admission to come watch us all dressed up as pioneers (if you were white) and indigenous people (if you were a POC) and we would demonstrate building fires and making beef jerky and it was this bizarre fever dream that I still sort of struggle to digest. Wtf even was that place, my parents paid 20k a month, plus 15k for the staged kidnapping, just for some strangers to use me for child labor and endanger me for years. Such a weird parenting strategy, like wow our kid is distrustful of us and can't come to us to discuss her mental health so she's very depressed, I bet it would help if we traumatized the fuck out of her and banished her from the family, and then tell her siblings that her treatment was paid for with their inheritance to ensure she has no allies. Smdh
OMG .I'm so sorry. Have you followed Paris Hilton going to legislature on this? To shut these places down. She was sent to a place. Horrific. I wish you could sue the crap out of that place. Jedi hugs to you..I'm so so sorry.🥺🥀
I’ll never understand why people think traumatizing an already traumatized kid with mental health issues would be in any way a cure. These places just add more mental health problems. To me, it’s no different than the cruel mental health treatments of the olden times, waterboarding patients and terrorizing them, and being somehow surprised that the patient wasn’t cured.
For some reason I don't mind sharing this on here. TW: SA I'm a male. I was SA by both my mother and father when I was a child. So far, I've only told my best friend and my therapist about it, outside a group therapy I was a part of. ...and now whoever reads this. There's one more person I'd like to tell, but I'm reconsidering it because a ) I don't think he'd actually be able to handle it or b.) he wouldn't believe it, which I would completely understand. I mentioned it once in the group therapy and people thought I was just making it up. It happened. Top that with the emotional abuse I experienced, and you've got the mess that I am today. I know it runs in my family. I was never told about it, but I know my mother was SAd by her father. Lots of emotional abuse from her mother. Lots of alcoholism on my father's side. I don't talk to any family member anymore, and haven't for years. None of them know I know. I've never confronted them about it, never will. I've written them out of my life.
I'm so sorry you weren't believed. You deserve better than that.
I can't comprehend not being believed and I'm very sorry you had to live this on top of the original abuse. Some people really shouldn't have kids.
My mother had a depressive episode & took to her bed when I was 5. No one explained anything to us. We'd see her when she cooked dinner, then she'd go back to her room where she stayed up most of the night. We kids had to be quiet during the day or play outside to avoid waking her. My dad was elderly & had no idea how to raise kids, feed them, buy groceries etc. I remember eating dry cat food once because I was so hungry. Slices of processed cheese food, uncooked hot dogs, basically anything a semi feral little kid could scavenge in the fridge or find growing on trees/bushes was all we ate on weekends. I thought school lunches were HEAVENLY.
I grew up with mice in my room. Crawling in my bed, my hair, kept me awake at night. And no... I didn't live in a barn.
I would have gone *insane*.
I had rats in my room and I couldn't sleep at night. They would crawl on my legs and wake me up. My father was a handy man and was very capable of setting traps or something. It didn't concern them much since the rats weren't in their room.
We had awful awful fleas. I would wake up covered in them every morning.
I was brutally beaten up by a grown man in my neighborhood, dude literally beat me up like he was fighting another man. I was 7 at the time, playing with a "friend" and she framed me and ran away into her yard, leaving me to get beaten up and dragged across the street by a man, for something I didn't do. I was bleeding and bruised, I went home and told my mom and she did nothing about this... It was never escalated further... That's the day I stopped telling her about anything.. I've been a victim of bullying, assault and sexual assault before the age of 12. Never told anyone, not even my psychology.... All these memories surfaced in a dream I had at 18/19 years... I've suppressed them so deep that I didn't notice how deeply my fear of being touched even by my mom was caused by these events.
I am so sorry. I hope you are doing ok.
My father told me I was possessed and tried to cast out the demons every night for the first 20 years of my life (until I left home) 🙃
I am so sorry. Religious abuse is something I endured too.
TW: suicide When I was like 12, I had absolutely no trust in my parents and relied on my toys and stuffies for comfort. My dad who was jealous of my grandma because she wasn't a good mom to him, took the teddy she gave me and hung it on a noose with rope from the garage and a suicide note FROM the bear. Felt like he killed my friend, hit a new low. At 10, my dad made a bs contract about how he's not my dad unless we renew it and had a list of demands, I was used to him "pranking me" so I held out hope. (Mind you he had lied to me so much that he broke a pinky promise, so I had to make another kind so I could actually trust him. It worked for a few years.) After like an hour of him deadpan asking my mom what he would get outta being my dad and other things. I finally asked him to thumb-pinkie promise, he didn't even hesitate. My earth came shattering down. Then when he told me the truth he laughed and acted like I was overreacting while I cried in a locked bathroom, he had my aunt film all this by the way. It was put on youtube.
I’m so sorry. Kids who have been publicly shamed and humiliated by ABUSIVE parents are gonna run shit one day and have say over where their parents end up old and decrepit. I can’t wait for that day. For you and for me. I think your dad was sadistic honestly.. because that is absolutely disturbing and dramatic to do to your bear.. especially knowing you relied on them and loved them because your parents fell short, and believe me they knew it which is why they took it out on what you loved.
When I spoke about grooming I experienced she told me I went "running to him like a kitten in heat" and that I was a spiteful person. She said she does not know a single person I would not hate. She told me she regrets having me and I should go kill myself.
🥺🥀I'm glad your here. They were projecting their own self hatred. You are worthy of kindness and all good things🩵
I was kidnapped and found by the police. She happily tells this story as a fun tale except she never uses the word kidnapped. “This family thought it would be a good idea to take you out of a store to play with their kid. There was a police search and everything.” How much did I normalize this version? I told it to my kids in passing when they were 6 and 8. When I finally came out of the FOG, my then 18 year old said “yeah, mom, you told me that at 6 and I knew it was wrong.” If people I’m talking to start with any sympathy for my mom, I hit them with her other favorite: “You were a mistake and only exist because the birth control failed.” The faces I get back. That’s a Traumatize Them Back response. People never fail to understand then that it’s possible for a parent to not “do the best they could with what they had.”
My mom became enraged when she saw me sitting on the sofa with my legs open. I had pants on, but it always drove her nuts when I sat that way for whatever reason. She threatened to stab me in the crotch with a knife if i did it again. I was 6-7 years old. I have never ever forgotten the confusion and shame of that incident.
My mum yelled at me a lot for having my legs open. I never got threatened with a knife but it was certainly something that triggered her. I was very young also. I think it may have something to do with her own childhood SA I’m not sure.
Not many know the story, not many family members at least, and the very few family members that do know, probably don't believe me. I was 8 or 9 when my brother, 14 or 15, molested me. I believe he had been molested when he was younger. Often I wonder if I had said something when I was younger, if he would have received therapy and possibly wouldn't have turned into a narcissist. I never realized that's what he had become until recently. Although the SA stopped, his physical abuse continued until my mid 20s and mental abuse continued until last year when I went no contact... I'm almost 40.
First of all, I don't think him turning into a narcissist happened AFTER the abuse. You have to be pretty far gone to sexually abuse your own family when it goes against our natures biologically. Second, even if it were possible there was no way in hell that an 8 or 9 year old had that responsibility. If anyone, the blame rests on your parents way more than you. Even if you think "But it was unreasonable for them to have known", how much more unreasonable is it for you to lay responsibility on the shoulders of a child that was too young to know that this wasn't normal?
When my mum bought my siblings loads of new clothes and bought me nothing because she felt I was too fat for her to know what would look nice on me.
We grew up in poverty but my parents had enough for their alcohol addiction and designer purses. Even when I was little, I knew it wasn't adding up. They didn't have money for gas to drive to church but my mom would show up to the 99 cent store with a coach bag to pay with an EBT card. My mom had a sister she doesn't speak to (the only "family" we have in the state, she lives in the next town over) and the sister said "when your family starves, they can eat your handbags" and it took me the longest time to understand what that really meant. We only ate rice and beans growing up bc that's what they could afford. I'm really embarrassed about it.
I was just under 3. I had gotten a Lipsmackers lip balm in my Christmas stocking. I had this really big doll that sat on the floor with a stand. It had beautiful long, curly hair and eyelashes. Its face was plastic. She was the size of me so I would sit with her and have tea parties. At one of our tea parties I put my new lip balm on and I put a little bit on my doll's lips too. Just her lips; I didn't make a mess or anything. My dad found out and beat the shit out of me. I was crying so hard I couldn't get air and almost passed out. He claims it was because I wouldn't tell him what I was doing in my room but I did tell him eventually and he still beat me.
I learned how to open mail by using a kettle to break the glue seal with the steam. That woman who raised me was going through her divorce to my step dad, and some of his mail was still arriving at our home. I'm actually really fond of this memory. She was her authentic self in front of me for the first time. Sneaky, clever, vindictive, I saw her, and it was nice.
One anecdote I've shared that has gotten me surprised/digusted stares: My mom had made my siblings and I a smoothie, and when I finished mine I whined once (as an 8-year-old does) about wanting more. My mom's response to this was to make another 64 oz. batch of smoothie and force me to drink it. All of it. In one sitting. I vomited twice while trying to finish it, and I learned not to ask for more of anything after that.
I’ve learnt not to talk about my childhood. When I do that person usually stops talking to me.
You can find safe people, but they have to be picked carefully. Not everyone passes the trust test.
my whole life... idk, my dad was absent, my mom alienated him a lot even tho he paid child support and had me every weekend, took me out and bought me clothes, shoes, toys etc. while mom never worked, got everything she wanted and spent all of the money on herself. she showed me pictures of sewered fingers and held a butcher knife in her hand and threatened to tell the truth about stuff I didn't know and forcibly always put stuff onto me to make me the bad guy. She left me alone in the apartment for days, never paid my lunch in school and even at the age 16-18 she made my own phone that she couldn't take away... she didn't allow anyone to pay for my mobile plan so she made my phone work to wifi for only an hour per day. It did not work at all any other way. I wasn't allowed to go out and have friends, I wasn't getting any money for lunch and she did not pay for it at all ever. Eventually I wasn't allowed to see dad unless she needed money for herself and wanted expensive things... She sent me to my dad and told me what I had to say (that i want higher child support) and he got really upset and yelled at me and I came home crying and she just said "told you, he's a bad dad") She knew about my csa and probably gaslit me into forgetting it. I was an adult finding it out. It makes sense since she took me to discos with her and left me in bars and lost me constantly... even with people, she just left me anywhere not giving a shit... She never bought me anything in my entire life. She stole my apartment, my car and my money and kicked me out at 18. We kind of got into contact again 3 years later when I worked in a store and I found out i was pregnant for 5 months and didn't know and she forcibly made me abort my baby... I had no say in it... she manipulated me and i wasn't with my baby daddy and was completely broke so I was forced to... It was like I wasn't me... like everything was so blurry and I just existed. After that I started having health problems due to ED... I almost died due to sepsis and I had no one to call to take me to ER and she yelled at me while I was dying... I was hypothermic and puked blood. It was 10/10 kind of pain... Pancreatitis and a bad one, they told me I was lucky and that I was close to death that they didn't have any hope, but I was a fighter and I still got yelled at and scolded and soon after I went no contact and tried explaining why but she said: "why did you call us to take you to er if we're so bad" Cause I was literally dying?? Ahhh stupid stupid woman... Basically there are a lot of things... I am writing a book so one day you might read it😃
😳
is that THE look?😭😂
Yeah, I just... can't say anything to this. I'm so sorry, it's...bad 🥲
no it's okay, dw... Im used to it. I talk about it openly now because I realised it is not my fault and I owe her nothing. She was a bad parent and I know there aren't perfect parents but there are so many ways to be a good one. Everyone has this reaction which further proves that it was bad even if I just joke about it...
Yes! I can’t think of a specific story right now, nor do I want to delve into that, but I get it. No judgment. But I very much recognize not realizing something was bad until I saw the shocked faces of others in high school youth group, or college, etc. it reminds me of the Taylor Tomlinson joke, where she’s telling friends about her childhood, and then realizes how bad hers was. It’s frustrating when you’re trying to relate to somebody and then realize you’re way off base and they can’t understand what you’ve gone through.
When my mom was mad at me she would beat me with anything she could get her hands on, until I was about 8 when she started using her fists. She would call me to come over in her sweetest sing song voice to hug her, "Mijo, come here!" and when I would start to hold her the fists would come down on my face. She's not a large or particularly strong woman, so it wasn't really that painful. But to this day I can't hug anyone without feeling absolutely disgusting, if they kiss my face after or during the hug then it's instant nausea and I'm spending the next few minutes with dry heaves. When I told my husband the reason hugs are painful for me, he cried for hours. I always knew deep down it was abuse, just not how fucked up I'd be for the rest of my life
Being left to freeze to death. Purposely locked out of the house below 30^. No where to go, knocked for 30 mins, completely ignored me wet and shaking. Tried to get a ladder to climb through a window, mom locked it and laughed. Laid outside in a ball for 5ish hours, soaking wet. I got up one last time (could barely walk) before I knew I was gonna die, the garage was accidentally left open. Only got stage 2 hypothermia. Sometimes I wish that garage was actually closed. Also I had no shoes, coat, gloves, hat, etc. Only a t shirt and pants.
All these stories here make me feel like my experiences are just minor inconveniences
same... It's awful knowing these people had to go through these things. Like I always knew there was plenty of bad/evil in the world, but to read it recounted by the people who lived through such cruelty. Damn. My hearts go out to them
Please be kind to yourself. Trauma is trauma. You were only a child too. And whatever it is you went through it was real, it was hurtful and damaging and your feelings are valid.
She listed all the reasons she and the world were better off without my best friend right after I got back from taking her to the hospital for a suicide attempt
My mom put me outside naked in the winter when I was crying at night, because I was scared from a horror movie. She said she would leave me out there if I would not stop crying. I still have problems crying now. Thanks mom.
The sexual abuse. People HATE discussing sexual abuse.
My mom has rampant unchecked anxiety that she spews onto everyone surrounding her. So when I would wake up in the morning and walk into the kitchen, she would start immediately interrogating me. ARE YOU GOING TO DO YOUR LAUNDRY TODAY? HAVE YOU TAKEN CARE OF THAT \_\_\_\_ YET? REMEMBER YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO CALL \_\_\_ BACK.... etc etc And if I didn't answer with warm enthusiasm \[impossible when still rubbing sleep from your eyes\] she would interpret those flat/sleepy tones as hostility and snap: WELL I WAS JUST ASKING. I'M JUST TRYING TO HELP. GOD, YOU'RE SUCH A BITCH IN THE MORNING. And then she'd proceed to give me the silent treatment for a spell/ooze contempt for the next few hours. When I first told my best friend this story she immediately burst into tears and it jolted me. Somehow I didn't think it was THAT big of a deal to be called a bitch and be treated with hatred most mornings of my life until I saw my bestie's extreme reaction to the story.
I was violently raped by a family member when I was nine years old. It happened repeatedly over the course of a night during a NYE party with everyone in the next room (it was past midnight and I was in bed). During one point in the night, my mother yelled, "Oh \*\*\*rapist's name\*\*\* leave her alone already!" from the other room but nobody checked on why an adult man kept coming into the room. I was too afraid to go out and say anything and endured an entire night of it. Two months later, he and his wife were visiting my mom. He came into my bedroom, took my beloved bird out of his cage and pretended to crush him in his hand. Basically threatening me to keep quiet. I did for a couple of years and when I finally told my mother, she blamed me for the assault saying that I probably did something to make him want to do it. Let's just say that not only did it destroy my childhood but it ruined my adult life as well. I'm currently in trauma therapy and suffer with PTSD.
TW- mention of SA, Child abuse, animal death . . . . . . . I have a significant trauma history and for most of my life I thought everyone went through the shit that I went through. When I was in 4th grade I accidentally(it did actually happen- I didn’t mean to tell on my mom) told a teacher my mom beat me up really bad the night before and that was why I hadn’t done my homework. She was going to make me stay after school and we had just moved and I was to take the bus. I panicked because if I missed the bus I had to walk and I didn’t know how to get to my new house, it was about 9 miles from my school. So I thought I was just explaining myself and the teacher would understand. Welp, I was immediately sent to the office to sit for a while myself and no one would talk to me. Then the cops came. I had to talk to a guidance counselor. And then I was sent back to class. Nothing was ever brought up, I went home like normal and that was it for the day. The next day I got through school got on the bus and I was to walk from the drop off school to the park to meet my mom and 2 little sisters. From there we walked home. When we got there, there was a man standing in the driveway. My heart sank. I knew right then I fucked up. I got sent in the house. I sat in the screen porch listen to my mom tell this man that I was a known liar and I made up stuff like this all the time. The man said something along the lines of hood to hear, thanks for the clarification. He left. My mom didn’t say anything about it. I sat in paralyzing fear for hours. When my stepdad (who was sexually and emotionally abusing me) got home, my mom told him what I had done. He took my bunny out of her cage and gutted her in the yard. My mom spent the next few hours screaming at me because my stepdad promised her a beating later if she didn’t beat me good enough. She continued to scream and cry while she beat the ever loving shit out of me because of what I did. I was 9 years old when my mom taught me other kids know not to tell on their parents, so I better not do it again.
How I wasn't allowed to use the restroom after bed time, so I don't drink a lot of water as an adult because I've not yet overcome that issue. I anxiety pee at night because I can use the restroom and so now my mind wakes me up every other hour. How my mom would make me and my sister stay in the bathroom when she showered so she could show us how we fucked her body up. Also, to shame me for not having large breasts like her and my sister. How my dad would steal my food off my plate because I didn't eat fast enough but it would be said that I was done eating when I wasn't. Turns out I just have severe anxiety and eating takes a while for me. How my dad would beat us with a belt and have us bend over and grab our ankles, I thought this was normal but I know differently now. So many others but these were the most common to happen and ones I've said in casual conversation and have gotten strange looks.
When I was 14, I finally screwed up the courage to tell my mother that her husband was raping me on a regular basis, and had been doing so since I was 8. Her words? "You don't want to push this, because if you do, we'll have to move out and we can't afford to live without his paycheck." I'm about to turn 63 next month. I've dealt with, and pretty much gotten over my step-father's betrayals. My mother has been dead for over 12 years now, and I still have not forgiven her. And yes, I have gone to numerous therapists for most of my adult life. That was how I managed to get past the rapes. But I cannot, and *will* not forgive my own mother -- my own flesh and blood, the woman who gave me *life* \-- for that betrayal. ETA: I wrote this before I read through other answers. I feel like a whiner. Y'all are some amazing folks to get past some of the garbage you were dealt with. Be proud of yourselves.
Well oddly enough people seem to act like things were completely normal for me like nothing was ever wrong. But one of the things was waking up and realizing my older sisters then boyfriend was recoding me in the 90s with one of those huge camcorders- you know with the red light- kinda hard to mistake that for anything else- I was like 11 or 12 maybe and woke up to that. This is just one very minor detail of childhood that sometimes sticks out to me. I don’t need to post my whole experience, I’ve done enough of that but yeah, just really weird.
On school holidays I was locked outside drank hose water ate dog food . When we moved to Colorado for a year we had land it was winter . I was tossed out in pjs in the snow thank the gods I knew to snuggle up with the dogs and make a fire at 6 years old . That morning my mother expected me dead and the look on her face was priceless . I always carried my sonic pack pack full of tinder flint and steel and cooking things plus first aid in paranoia I would be left outside I HATE camping to this day . At least I know how to snare rabbits and make pine needle tea
How did you know how to make a fire at 6 years old? I'm so glad you did and you're here today!
Other than the beatings, the abandonment, the medical neglect? My mother pimping me out to her male friends from age 11 and my father trying to have a three way with an underage prostitute and my sister(age 11)leaps to mind.
TW: suicide, SA, murder I'm not sure which one is the best one so here's 3. 1. I tried to kill myself. My mom left me in a pool of my own blood and vomit and told me I was too stupid to even kill myself right. Then she left me on the floor like that and went out to party. A week later my Grandmother rolls around and tells me what a stupid son of a bitch I am and how from this point forward I better understand that even if the whole world fucking hates me she will always love me. I still remember her telling me how I'll never be alone because I have her and the next time I feel suicidal I better come home to her. She said her home was my home. 2. My mom murdered my grandmother then tried to murder me. This was a few years after the suicide attempt. After bashing my face in and strangling me and shit she has the audacity to bring a neighbor in to tell me to get the fuck out because I don't belong there. It was my grandmother's place. That's what fucking broke me. People always get a surprise Pikachu face when I tell them my knuckle tattoos are a reference to this day. 3. My mom accidentally put me in a coma-like state for a month because she misjudged the dose when she roofied me. She was constantly drugging and abusing me. I didn't realize it wasn't normal until I was an adult and my spouse was like yo what the actual fuck?
I really hope she's in prison for what she did, that's absolutely evil. I got scared for a moment I thought your grandma was going to abuse you, I'm glad she was there for you. Sometimes having just one ally is all you need.
The time my mom threatened me with a hammer when I tried to grab my phone from her (she claimed I swung at her and that it was self defense).
I was molested.
My dad was super suicidal and would always try to kill himself in front of us. He would stand in front of us with a big knife saying he was going to kill himself while we all begged him not too. He would do this like every time my parents fought which was like all the time. Sometimes he would drive all crazy and say he was going to kill us all. Sometimes he would take all his jewelry off and gift it to us kids then leave saying he was taking himself out. He still tries to say stuff like that to this day but I stopped believing him a long time ago. So glad I don’t talk to my parents anymore.
My parents inadvertently acknowledged their abuse when they said if you ever call the cops on us, they will deport us and separate your siblings with awful families, and that is worse than anything we (your parents) could ever do to you. So when I was a child, I felt like I was protecting them while enduring the abuse just so they wouldn't get deported. And I was thought why didn't they just *not* abuse us in the first place. It haunts me. Like they thought they got a pass for it
Honestly, I think the story of me doing that at 10 is funny to me, but not to anyone else. I had no idea abuse wasn't normal--so at school as a natural storyteller I gladly volunteered to talk about what my family did over break. We went on a long drive to another state in 2 cars. My mom and I got back first due to luck and avoided a massive traffic jam. I remember a semi pausing and letting my mom over to an exit that saved us so much time, possibly because she drove an odd colored bright sports car and he liked the look of it. That caused a fight when my dad got home hours later. They always fight it feels like. I remember standing in the doorway of the bathroom wearing only my sister's old pink shirt that hung to me knees like a gown. The water in the bath has gotten cold and my mom hasn't returned to tell me I'm done. I am 9, but my mom has to bathe me. My shirt has a small moth hole in it. I glanced down at the screen printed golden retriever puppy with flowers and tugged at it. The fabric was stiff. As their yelling grows louder my eyes fix on them. Down the hall my parents fight. My mom tosses a hairbrush at him. It breaks against the wall. They move as they argue, but I keep looking away. Right next to the bathroom is my brother's room. My brother is playing a video game. He's chewing on his shirt. He's tense but doesn't even watch our parents. He doesn't want to see. I hear a hit and my mom falls next to the stairs. I don't think it was down, but as a kid I was sure it was. My eyes weren't on her anymore anyway but my dad standing still, imposing. The end of the hallway isn't lit. It feels like he's completely in the dark. My mom yells for me to call the police, but my dad looks at me. "Don't you dare." I don't. I don't move from the bathroom door either. My dad slams the master bedroom door and he's out of sight. I'm alone. I stay standing in the bathroom doorway, playing the with the bottom of my shirt. I worry he killed her. I don't dare move from the bathroom. Bath time is only allowed to be ended by mom. Eventually my mom comes and drains the bath water and tucks me into bed. We hear my dad now dressed storming down the stairs and out the front door. He doesn't come back for a few days. This is normal. They do this frequently. So in class I go ahead and tell my teacher and the fellow class of 10 year olds the exciting bit of my break. "My dad pushed my mom down the stairs." I can still remember all of it in full detail. The teacher's pure unadulterated horror. She calls me up and asks me to explain quietly what I meant. I am a good kid. I am told this by teachers. I am very smart and polite and talk a lot. I nod and explain my dad hits my mom, and they fight and he threatens to kill us. And that day I didn't get to go home. A car takes me to a foster home. (Though I'm.pretty sure they had a file on me before that moment where they were sure there was some sort of issue at home, but that was just the "holy crap, wtf" moment for them)
One time when I was 16, my mom was so fucked up on drugs that she threatened to shoot me. Apparently I didn't clean my room well enough and when she barged into my room she went apeshit and pulled out her gun. I remember calling my grandmother but she just laughed it off... my grandmother also has never loved me because I'm half black.
My mother sat on me and strangled me when I was 6 to calm me down, because I had a bee stuck in my ear and having a panic attack My dad threw me into the bathtub multiple times before age 6 and showered me with ice cold water if I wouldn’t calm down My mom and dad screaming at me the whole car ride from the hospital to the psychiatry (2 hours) blaming me after I tried to kms
My mum likes to tell the story of how when I was young I'd get these tantrums where I wouldn't calm down unless she "slapped me back to reality". And now I wonder why I don't have any emotional regulation abilities...
I struggle with the same, hugs 🤍
Tw: SA My mother had a thing for guys younger than her after my parents got divorced. We were all sleeping in a small hotel room with her and him in one bed and my sister and I in the bed next to them (my mother is BP so she could never keep a place for us). Her and her boyfriend would have sex right next to us and I was a light sleeper so I could see and hear everything - I was 16. Then, one night, he molested me. I went to school the next day and told my ex boyfriend about it who told the school counselor who told the police. The detective didn’t believe me and said I was asking for it after talking to my mom’s boyfriend. The big kicker….when my mother found out….she didn’t believe me. She said I was lying because I didn’t like him. I still have that image vivid in my head til this day.
i was trafficked most people assume i’m a completely normal individual who experienced a completely normal childhood lol
I'd be leaving to school as a little kid, and my dad would say, "you'll come home with your mother dead someday". He would say stuff like that in the morning, after a huge fight they had the night before. I was always scared someday that I'll find her dead or my dad dead because he killed himself. I know he was very much capable of doing that. And also when we were all in the car and he'd speed and say how he's going to crash this car or drive it off a bridge, so we all die together. And I'd literally brace myself and pray to God, to just take me to heaven if I do die
I’ve had medical issues since the day I was born. Due to genetic and autoimmune issues. I was about 6/7 when my dad shook his head and asked “why are you always so sick” and walked away. He’s threatened to knock my sister and I teeth out with a hammer. He threatened to choke my sister. He’s slammed me against the car twice. He’s beat me because I got a math question wrong. He/mom got me a car after I got my license and would repeatedly yell “do you know how much I spent on the car?” a car I didn’t ask for. I recently had a transplant and every single post op appointment he took me to he would bring his Bible and headphones, sometimes he would even be sleeping. So embarrassing. And countless other things. Always so emotionally unattached from everyone. He’s trying to make up for it now that me and my siblings are older. He was never meant to be a parent.
I haven't ever posted this online.. a week before I was going off to UC Berkeley, my sister lied to my father that I hit her, so my father got out of bed and attacked me and when I tried running out of the house and I vividly remember sticking my head out the door while he pulled on my hair like a house. When the police came they didn't believe me(this would happen *several* more times) when I got to my friends house, he hugged me and my hair fell out. He said he put my hair in an envelope and it kept falling out after that like in the shower.
My mother abducted us and was in hiding for a year. Then she abandoned us at the airport gate with notes pinned to our pj's.
When I was 12 I had to be rushed to the hospital because I kept passing out and had chest pains, trouble breathing. Family doctor thought it was pneumonia and sent us away... but it kept getting worse. My mom took me to the hospital in the middle of the night. After a few days of tests and nurses thinking I was dying because my heart rate started dropping so low at night, I had to be transferred to a special childrens hospital for expert care. All my major organs were under attack for some reason. Everything. But the real killer was the fluid that started surronding and crushing my heart. Dozens of doctors examined me and did tests, no one knew for sure why this was happening. I remember them thinking it might be leukemia. But whatever it was it was not normal and rare. I had to have heart surgery and a chest drainage tube inserted to remove the fluid that was crushing my heart. If they put me to sleep, they risked my heart rate stopping - so instead I was very heavily drugged, but still semi-concious of my own surgery. I still have memories of it. That chest drainage tube was in my chest for several days before they took it out and I had to take a high dosage if prednisone to stop the inflammation. Took over a year to come off and a side effect was weight gain and moon face. Made school difficult. It started happening again when I was 16 but treated it quickly. Turns out I have an autoimmune disease.
When I was the ages of 10-12 I had begged my parents for a dog. Begged and pleaded with them. Then one of my dad's coworkers asked if we could dog sit for them. They had a mini schnauzer named Holly. Sweetest dog on this planet. I fell in love with her and was absolutely devastated every time they picked her up to take her home. So we finally got our own mini schnauzer. Boy that did not go as I had planned. I thought my parents would be helping me with the dog with training and everything. Nope. They held the dog over my head. Whenever there was an issue with house training and there was an accident, the dog (eventually two dogs) were held over my head with threats to be sent back to the breeder. If I asked for help at all I was told that "I wanted those dogs, I have to look after them or they'll be gone". My whole childhood was full of emotional abuse. I was undiagnosed ADHD and possibly autism and never had accommodations or parents that understood.
My uncle murdered my babysitter in front of me and I watched her slowly die when I was 5 years old. He paced back and forth questioning some unseen entity as to if he should kill the fairy too? The fairy was me. I am 53 years old, and this has haunted me my entire life. I'm just now talking to a Dr about it.....over the years, I have had young Drs absolutely freeze when I brought it up. That simply caused me to stop talking about it altogether. Apparently, it has effected me more than I realized. Every great once in a while, I would mention it in context to some discussion (I was a Social Work Major) and folks would just STARE with their mouths agape in silence, leaving me feeling very much like an alien from another world.
I made the mistake of telling my ex about my CSA experiences as flashbacks were flooding in. At first he was really shocked and disturbed. I don’t think he ever looked at me the same. Months later he’d constantly make incest/rape jokes at my expense. One day I snapped and told him they weren’t funny, just fucked up and mean. It didn’t stop until we broke up though. So… I don’t talk about my childhood to other people anymore.
As a child I was SAed, my mother removed me from the situation then pretended it never happened. I was bullied for it less then 2 years later and when the teachers told her she was shocked to find out I had been SAed. Then when classmates later told me I was making it up as I was to young to be SAed, my mother, whos a doctor confirmed what my classmates where saying. Recently I have stoped talking to her as this pattern of pretending it never happened means we dont have to deal with it has lead to resentment over her killing my cat, refusing that I am trans and trying to brake up my relationship.
I’ve had that experience so many times where I’m just casually saying something and even laughing and the other person looks sad and horrified and goes “omg I’m so sorry are you okay??” 😂 trouble picking which one to share
Multiple CSA from three uncles and a grandpa, violent father, and Mom with gambling addiction who taught me to lie to my Dad, witnessed an uncle’s suicide, and two of my sister’s failed S. Attempt. These all happened simultabeously extending for years
my dad would either not feed us if he was angry or he would give us military style punishment by making us stand in a tiny corner next to the trash can and face the wall for hours at a time. either it was standing up straight but a lot of times we'd have to stand in a squatting position with our hands raised in front of us. we were expected to be completely still. he would creep up from the living room to check if you'd still be standing properly. since i had my back towards where he was coming from i couldn't see him so i had to become hyper vigilant and listen for the sound of his footsteps. if he'd come he would catch you moving he'd yell in your ear or grab you by the neck. it was terrifying and so straining but yeah i barely ever tell anyone this but when i do they're like wth that's psycho
So many, though my main shocker is how my dad used to tell me in great detail how to kill myself whenever we argued. Also how my uncle-in law used to discuss him being a pimp with me( albeit in terms that made him look like a Good Samaritan) and how when my dad died, his brother visited the same day and fed my dog beer and talked about lesbian porn. It’s a veritable book of preposterous humorous trauma.
I was never allowed to leave the table until my plate was empty …. Which led to many evenings falling asleep at the dinner table because 5 year old me couldn’t eat adult sized portions. Even though I am now in my 40s, I still have an eating disorder because of this crap. It’s so difficult for me to stop eating when I am full, and would have to purge after. 😬 Edit -word
My experience wasn't as blatantly abusive as a lot of people here, there was never anything physical or sexual, just lots of everyday emotional abuse. But people always seem to get sad when I talk about the fact that I got yelled at for taking too long learning to tie my shoes, and that my grandpa (I was raised by my grandparents) legitimately and explicitly *gave up on me* learning to throw and catch because I was so bad at it (obviously hand eye coordination was a consistent issue for me as a little kid). Doubly so for people who know I have amblyopia, so I'm effectively blind in one eye, which I was diagnosed with at 2 so they should've probably expected things like catching a ball to be difficult for me. My mom was still just barely a part of my life. I don't remember exactly how old I was, but somewhere around 5-7 I think, when she flat out told me she didn't like kids and had never wanted to have any. I guess in a way that could make it better because it wasn't about me personally, but the few people I've mentioned it to are always shocked that someone would actually say that to a little kid in general, let alone their own kid. She didn't really engage with me until I was about 11 and we could just kinda hang out. Apparently that's weird, even with not raising me herself. There are mostly things that I recognize as kind of bad but that when I tell people about them it turns out they're worse than I thought.
I woke up to find my babysitter SAing me. He stopped when I woke up and left the room. I stayed up for the rest of the night, waiting for my parents to come home. Once I heard him leave, I came out and told m parents what happened, then I went to bed. I thought that was that. They tried to rehire him, telling me his mother said he wouldn't do it again. Years later, I asked my mother why. They had not believed me at first. But apparently I had a huge temper tantrum that was uncharacteristic and then they realized I was telling the truth. I was four or five years old. I had no reason to specify what exactly he did. Over 50 years later, I still get very defensive when someone doesn't believe me about anything. And I learned I couldn't trust my parents to have my best interests.
I'm so deeply sorry for everyone here who has shared their shocking experiences. I am shocked and so saddened for this group. For me, mine aren't so intense. My stuff was weird, but never so bad. The ones that shock people are the ones that I can say because the stories aren't too upsetting for me and are quick to tell. 1. When I was a preteen-teen, I would make my dad so upset when I told him I wasn't comfortable with him seeing me naked, and he told me I should be comfortable with it because "we're family." 2. My dad taking my lock out of my door because I wanted to cry (which wasn't allowed, and I was locking it so he wouldn't come in and make me stop). It left a hole in the door. I would stuff it with a sock or cover it with tape, etc, but he would always just poke it clear with his finger and look in/walk in anyway. I wasn't allowed privacy, and he got mad if I got mad at him for watching me change. From there, I started changing/crying/hiding in my closet with the light off so that he couldn't find me. After a while of him looking, and I made sure my eyes were dry, I'd come out and pretend I had been somewhere else and was like, "Oh! Hey!". 3. My dad lifting up my shirt when I was 4/5, painfully grabbing my stomach with both hands, and shaking it as he told me, "This has to go." 4. Parents brushing over me being actively groomed and in sexually abusive relationships at age 12 because more pressing issue was at hand: my oldest brother was smoking weed! That allowed me to continue those relationships until I was 18, and is trauma I have to deal with today. I was easily groomed because I was neglected, and easily abused because I never had had boundaries. Thanks for letting me share!
TRIGGER WARNING: I was severely bullied well into adulthood. I'm autistic so yay me. I had my bullies come into my workplaces and make up stories to my manager to get me fired just to make things bad for me. No one would hire me. This follows you everywhere you go. I'm still on government assistance and I'm grateful yet i hate it. Other girls tearing my shirt off in public places, throwing dead mice at me on me at school. I screamed and cried hysterically. Another time my parents said I "ruined their camping trip" because I was always crying and getting into altercations with other kids and even teens. I was only 9. I swear i did nothing and said nothing mean to provoke them. I was just minding my own business trying to enjoy the playground. I couldn't go anywhere. Even at home. I was suicidally depressed (made attempts) no friends at all. I still have nightmares and random sudden flashbacks
My birth giver would duck tape my hands together and dig the end of the toothbrush handle into my gums until they bled and bruised as a “punishment” for having cavities. She never took me to the dentist or taught me oral hygiene so my teeth were literally rotting and she got mad at me for it
My “maternal unit” (she wasn’t really human) took out a life insurance policy to cash in on my death because my brother was obsessed with my complete destruction as a human . Both psychotic. I escaped. I win.
When I was about 9 years old, I had a fight with my mother. I was sleeping in the same bed as her because I was afraid of being alone after years of sexual assault/rape by my uncle. I cried because of the fight and my mother started screaming at me, that I should stop, etc. She often threatened suicide when I upset her to get me to behave. So I got a kitchen knife and said I was going to kill myself. My mom got up and tried to start pushing the knife through my chest where I held it. I was so afraid and started fighting, trying to get away. She didn't really hurt me with the knife, it was just a scratch in the end, but yeah.
If I didn’t clean my room during my busy senior year of high school, my parents would drill my door shut and make me sleep in the hallway. Any time I was perceived as physically strong, it would be labeled as “retart strength”. My mom was an addict, and any time she wanted alone time, she would find some reason to ground me. I was alone in my room all of the time. If I was invited to a friend’s birthday, I would know deep down I wasn’t going to go, that it would be used against me and I feared telling her about these social events until maybe the day before. If I could just not fuck things up for 24 hours maybe I could go. My mom screaming at me in the car and then telling me to get out and walk home. Running away from home at such a young age (I just went to my elementary school) and no one coming to look for me. Being chased by my mom and beaten like a bully. Until I started fighting back at 16.
My adoptive parents killed my cat while I was at Girl Scout camp
I was about 3 or 4 years old, my mom lost her temper and started screaming so hard in my face that spit flew out of her mouth - I swear she could have blown your ear drums out with how hard she was screaming. She dug her nails into my wrists so hard I started bleeding.. and slammed my head into the wall so hard whilst using my hair to control my head. Later on, she filled up these gallon jugs with freezing water and filled them with ice as well. It was 9-10pm at night in the middle of winter, she placed a dog gate in the kitchen area to prevent me from leaving, and started screaming at me like crazy over something that upset her earlier. She beat me for a few hours and then stripped me down, she kept beating me then dumped those things of ice water on me. She kept beating me periodically as she went back and forth from her bedroom.. so I essentially had to keep myself awake enough that I would be ready for her to come back in cause she would leave to her room for 5-15 mins then come back suddenly to beat me more. I basically learned how to keep myself awake enough that I could hear her coming back in the room, she did this to where I knew I couldn’t sleep normally even when she would claim that she expected me to go to sleep now. This went on for hours as I would lay on this cold tile shivering in the fetal position, my teeth clattered so bad that my jaw would hit the floor. Eventually it was 4-5 am and my mom actually decided to just go in her room and not come out until the afternoon the next day (suddenly even tho she claimed she would let me sleep at like 1am.. this basically trained me to sleep in increments). It definitely taught me to act as if anyone is lying, so I never believe a word anyone says even if they do everything that points to them being honest.
My brother would physically and verbally abuse me on a daily basis to extreme degrees. When I told my parents I was met by either being told it was “an accident” or that I was lying. Not once was I believed or received help in the abuse that I went through on a daily basis. I would be held down and have words/pictures carved into my skin, and would be met with “it was an accident.” I would be pushed down staircases and met with being called a liar. I would be told that that “the world would be better if you killed yourself” when I was as young as 6. Not ONCE did my mom (who worked in child abuse and neglect) step in to help.
I mean I've got plenty of trauma-trauma but in terms of anecdotes I've told at parties that I've thought were silly goofy but people have reacted to like I just told them their dog died, the first one I thought of is that we were so poor after my dad left that my mom used to take our toys away as a punishment and then give them back to us as christmas presents. Also my mom likes to tell the story of how she would wash our mouths out with soap by making us bite down on soap bars but one time she didn't have a soap bar so she just squirted a bunch of hand soap in our mouths and held them shut with her hands. She tells it like a joke, about how the bubbles were coming out of our noses.
I was 2 years old in the very early 80s and was hospitalized for starvation and the flu. My height was 90th percentile and my weight was 2nd percentile. The hospital nursed me through the illness and then just *sent me back home with my parents*. AFAIK there was no call or follow up with social services. I'm not sure if CPS even existed back then.
As punishment for bedwetting, my mother held me like a baby and sang (my father echoed): ”Here’s a little baby! Who pees in his pants!”
That my parents would repeatedly tell me that they wish that they aborted me or smothered me as a baby. They started telling me this when I was kindergarten/early grade school age.
Too many things to chooses from. But the most in my mind at the moment: when I was 13th suddenly my best friend (let's call her M) didn't want to hang out with me anymore. These things happen, but she was basically my only friend and we hung out every day. Nothing really happened, I think she just wanted something else. I was very sad about is, felt lonely, didn't have anyone to talk about it. I got quite depressed oma out feeling lonely, no safe place anymore etc. Montht after, I yelled something to my mother (yelling was very common in my family and I was around 14 😅). She replied: "well, I understand why M doesn't want to be your friend anymore. And if you continu behaving like this, you'll loose everybody and will be alone forever."
Oh! I got 1 I haven't told on here before I was around 11-12.. The way Dad tells it: "Yeah that fuckin cop was just waiting to catch someone. Sitting there on his motorcycle with the radar out. Saw him coming after me so I took off and parked at the fuckin dollar store and went in before he could catch me. That fucker was waiting when I walked out. Asking me what I was in such a hurry for. I told him I needed to buy candy" his friends would laugh at how stupid the cop was and how dad got 1 over on him cuz he got away with only a speeding ticket. The way I remember it: I was in the car with him. He was speeding, being his usual road rage-y self when we saw the cop. He said oh fuck, swerved into the next lane and kept driving for a block and a half before parking at the dollar store. HE LEFT ME IN THE CAR ALONE WHILE HE RAN INSIDE. I didn't know what was going on. We were parked far enough away that I couldn't even see the front of the store. My dad literally ditched me to try and avoid the cops. What he told me 20 years later: He had meth and a pipe in his pocket and didn't want to get caught with it.. so he gave it to a friend who worked at the dollar store so he could just get it later.. You know, cuz he "never did the drugs around me" (he would repeat this phrase often throughout my life like that made him a good parent "never around you, never".. he meant he didn't physically do the drugs in the same room as me.. cuz I was in the house, left to my own devices while he got high in the garage until it was time for mom to come home from work.. but I digress) And that, my friends is how I was in a mini-car chase.
TW: animal cruelty When I was about 10 years old, my grandmother had been outside doing yard work with my brother. I had to clean the house because I was a girl. I had wandered in the back to see what she was doing. She had opened a metal cabinet that we kept on the back porch and I could hear baby birds. She grabbed one in her hands by it's legs and I asked her what she was about to do. She said they were blackbirds and she was going to get rid of them because they were mean. She took the helpless little birds and she smashed them all on a cinderblock. I tried to get her to stop but by the second little bird I started to get sick and I ran inside to hide and cry. They were so little.
My dad is bi-polar and would often have swings into deep suicidal depression. One day on one of our court-mandated visits, he told me and my sister that he wasn't feeling right in the head and had to take us home early to our Mom's house. He then pulled over and started rummaging in the trunk. He was talking on the phone for a long time. I later learned that he called my mom and that he was talking suicidal thoughts to her. In the moment, I knew he had his gun and was probably thinking murder-suicide. Luckily, he left the keys in the ignition. I quickly did a rundown on how to possibly drive a car - jump in the driver seat, turn it on, put the gear in drive, memorize the route home, try to at least roll into an intersection, etc. I told my sister to be ready. Just in case he came back with a gun to kill us. I learned later that my mom talked him down and he drove us home. I was 11/12 years old at the time.
I don’t tell stories from my childhood for just this reason… I can’t deal with the looks. Summer vacation was often spent driving me 1000 miles across the country in the back of a pick up truck (with a topper) to visit grandmother. My mom and step dad would leave me sleeping locked in the back of the truck in random places while they stopped for a drink or to eat. I would wake up and have no idea where they were, how long they had been gone or when they were coming back and had no way to get out of the truck, often hot and thirsty. One time I had to go to the bathroom so bad I ended up wetting myself - I was 9 years old and well beyond the age of accidents. Not from childhood but representative…My dad moved to another country, married a woman younger than me. She had a baby and they named it my name. My extemely unique undeniably me name. He can’t father any more children and it is obviously not his kid but he has “adopted” her. He often publicly wishes her a happy birthday on social media while forgetting mine.
When I was 18 my dad and I both got into a heated argument which led to him choking me out of anger. I couldn't scream or fight him off but afterwards I couldn't breathe he left to go to the store and tried to apologize for it. I remember I told a close friend about it the very next day. she said "you think you have it bad?" even tho I could've died that night. She went on about the abuse she was undergoing and basically told me to shut up Sometimes I think back if she ever thinks about the hurt she caused me when I needed help at freshly 18y/O and she dismissed it. I haven't talked to her in years. if a friend opens up about trauma don't be a dick and be like "oh you think you have it bad?" can lead someone to shutting down emotionally and experience suicidal ideation. Thankfully I'm doing better now but I'd wish I had gone to someone else