Childhood How Many Here Have Been Treated Like Absolute Idiots?

[BradyLady]

Ask my family, and they will probably rave on about how amazingly and outstandingly brilliant I am. (I'm not. My IQ is above average, but that's all. I'm not a genius, and I'm nothing unusual.) However, in practice, they've also made it plain they think I'm dumber than a dog biscuit. I don't know how many times I've heard, "You're book smart, but you have no common sense." This is usually in the context of some social blunder, or perhaps a skill requiring physical coordination which I am *not* quick to pick up on. Bullies in elementary school used to call me a certain ugly word that starts with the letter R, and on one occasion my mother lost her temper and said it too. I couldn't understand the instructions she was giving me, so she lashed out at me, "Sometimes I think you really are mentally (that word)!" (This was in the 1970's when it was still the correct medical term.) She apologized immediately because "that was a cruel thing to say," but even then, I noticed she didn't actually deny it. She was only sorry she said it. Didn't give me any indication that it wasn't true and she didn't mean it.

It was a double-edged sword. On one hand, praising me to the moon and stars about how much smarter I am than everyone else made an average performance feel like failure. "I'm disappointed in you. It wouldn't have surprised me out of So-and-so, but I thought you were better than that. " I mean, once I brought home a score of 99, not on one single test but as the grade on my report card for the entire subject, and I was royally ripped a new one because it wasn't a 100. Furthermore, my straight A's "didn't count," my mother's boyfriend told me, because he saw me studying. If I was actually all that smart, I'd be able to get straight A's without ever opening a book. And my mother sat there hearing all of this, and didn't say a word. As long as she had a man in her bed at night, what did she care how he was treating her children?

So you see, even when I did well, I still didn't do good enough.

Further "you're stupid" vibes were set off when I do something perfectly ordinary, and they celebrate and jump up and down like I just won the Nobel prize. This gives off the signal that they didn't think I could do it, and I surprised them by succeeding and not mucking it up like they expected me to. I reiterate, I'm talking about something perfectly ordinary. Just a common life skill, a milestone most people can cross successfully, and they act like it's a miracle. Why?

For example, what prompted me to start this thread was a random memory just popping into my head. I don't know why it did, but sometimes that happens. I used the expression, "what it boils down to," and even though by now I was an adult, my mother gushed and praised me like I'd just coined the most clever turn of a phrase she'd ever heard in her life. "Oh, I like that. What it boils down to." Is my vocabulary so limited, that I can use an expression so common it's a chiché, and she's surprised I came up with it?

What are your experiences? Bonus question: In addition to flashbacks from the major trauma, do random memories of minor instances just pop into your head out of nowhere like that?

 

[Naoru]

Yes! To family, I'm brilliant if they're speaking of me, but I'm an idiot if they're speaking to me. They've never told me they were proud of me and have only tried to undermine anything I've ever done. Little things to big things. Total lack of support and abuse no one should have to go through, but when they talk about me to someone else, I'm on a pedestal a million feet high. I relate to all of the examples you gave. Nothing is ever good enough. Yep, I'm an absolute idiot and memories pop up all the time! ;)

... Now I'm trying to focus on flipping their messages around to the truth/opposite, learning to set new boundaries, and recognizing my accomplishments rather than diminishing everything and being consumed by self-hatred ...

 

[LanaD]

One of my teachers once told my mother I was doing a great job in class. My mother's response was that she was surprised because I wasn't very bright. The conversation took place right in front of me.

What hurt me most wasn't even that, but the fact that I grew up thinking that that was normal, so whenever my younger siblings were struggling with a subject I'd tell them they were stupid because I actually thought that that is how you motivate people. Most of my years in therapy are about me trying to forgive myself but I still can't.

And yes, there's one particular memory that haunts me, of the look of hurt in my little brother's eyes the day it occurred to me that maybe what I was doing was wrong.

 

[Deleted member 29920]

I've been wondering about this too, I always thought I was really stupid and Yeah my main abuser treated me like I was retarded, even after I got my B. A.

 

[BradyLady]

I was late learning to drive a car. I mean, really late. In my forties. Reason, nobody ever bothered to teach me. I'd always been brainwashed to think I was too damaged and defective to be able to learn. That's neglect for you. Fail to teach me a basic life skill (while teaching my younger siblings) and then use the fact that I lack that skill as evidence that I'm incompetent. "She needs us to look out for her. She can't take care of herself. After all, she can't even drive a car." That all changed when I moved thousands of miles away from my hometown to marry my husband. At first he wondered why a woman my age hadn't already been driving for years, like most people. Yes, I'm disabled, but not to that extent.

He soon understood the problem. It was perfectly illustrated when I called home for Mother's Day and announced that I'd bought a car. My brother's immediate response was a stunned, "What are YOU doing with a car!?" My husband's take on that: "What does anybody do with a car?" He couldn't understand my brother's confusion. And he's right. I was learning to drive a car, not giving birth to an alien. It wasn't that shocking. That's exactly what I mean: do something ordinary, and they act like they're surprised I succeeded.

Oh, but if I point out that they're treating me like they think I'm stupid.... it's just my imagination. Why do I have to have such a negative attitude all the time?

 

[Changing4Best]

My husband was one of those people who somehow escaped school during the 8th grade. However, he was said to have more "common sense" than a college grad. Me? I was the college grad, always standing right next to him when this kind of thing was said about him.

In grammar school I was called an idiot and worse. I had a learning disability, so this kept me in the last reading group, until 6th grade, when I finally caught up, and then passed everyone into the advanced reading group. None the less, they still called me "stupid" and "ugly" and every other insult they could think of. I was the least popular girl, never got invited to a prom (you didn't go without being invited back then).

I escaped from all of this by hanging around with boys from my church, which was in a different school district. There, no one called me stupid or any other bad thing, in fact I was popular there.

Go figure...

 

[Abstract]

There are differences but I do relate in some ways and the title could definitely be mine.

I was never treated as if I was intelligent. The only times it slipped out was indirectly from my mother when she was running my sister down. Everything done always pulled apart, laughed at, belittled. I think there was usually I worse reaction when I was most effective. What they said and how they reacted clashed. But the thing that I now think was used against me the most was dissociation. My main mode of defense in my home when it came to myself was to be as good and as invisible as possible. That manifested itself internally sometimes in a literal sense - I saw and felt myself dissolving and becoming transparent. Ghost like. My lack of attention, my spaciness, clumsiness and forgetfulness was sneered at and used against me. Speaking was dangerous so I mostly just stopped speaking. The utter shock they displayed whenever I achieved anything or when others responded positively to me was striking. Later I would switch that silent frozen me off and be eloquent me if the right outside person came along and the stunned shock reaction to that would have almost been funny. if it wasn't so telling and sad.

My family did this when it came to looks as well. My mother started early telling me that bad little girls thought they were pretty and then proceeded to point out all my faults. The irony is that people supposedly did think I was pretty and told me. The confusion, inner self hatred was crazy making. Calling me fat was one of the things she did. Even putting me on diet when I was seriously underweight,

It can be extremely difficult developing a sense of reality, self belief and identity when our caretakers systematically undermined and belittled that reality and our worth. How are you supposed to believe you aren't something mouldy stuck to the bottom of someones shoe if your family has always treated you as if you are. Or worse.

 

[Beemo3780]

I was really late learning to drive too, like in my 30s. Same thing basically, my parents wouldn't allow me to get my permit until I was 18, and then I got involved with my ex-husband who didn't want me to drive. Both my parents and my ex would tell me that I would be dangerous on the road. When I got remarried years later, my husband patiently taught me to drive, but it was funny because it only took me a week to learn. I'm a cautious driver, but he was surprised I did so well and learned so fast.

My ex would tell me I was stupid all the time, and my father still treats me like I'm dumb. My father says really demeaning things to me and always acts like I'm mentally incapable of learning simple things. My husband has gotten into arguments with him because of it. I've had to go through a process of keeping remind myself that I'm not dumb. I'm a fast learner, and I'm an IT analyst that deals with complex algorithms that most people would not be able to understand. I used to be a math tutor in college because of my high grades. I'm also pretty good at contributing to conversations of various topics.

One thing I've realized over the years is that people that are vocal with criticisms and insults usually are pretty insecure with themselves.

 

[Deleted member 29920]

I am in my thirties and can't drive either

 

[BradyLady]

My first husband was abusive. It didn't take me long to figure out how to shut him down when he called me stupid, though. All I had to do was answer, "Yes, I sure am stupid. Look who I married." Oh, that would make him so mad, knowing he walked right into that one. Brings to mind something I've seen floating around on the internet: "Never laugh at your wife's choices. You're one of them."

Right now I'm still drifting in and out of a big state of depression, and old tapes keep playing. I have a tendency, straight up due to childhood conditioning, to think like this: Whatever I'm good at is no big deal. Either it's so easy you could train a brain-damaged chimpanzee to do it, or it's not a skill that counts in the real world, and therefore focusing on it is a waste of time. Those skills that are really important in life, and worth bothering with, just happen to be the same ones I'm not good at and struggle to learn. "Yeah, well, who cares if you got an A on your spelling test? Out there in the real world, spelling doesn't count. Social graces matter more. You said an awkward, inappropriate thing at that party last night, so even if you are book smart, you're a failure in real life."

Thinking this way, of course, undermines any pride in accomplishment, even when I do get it right. And my family always wondered why I spent most of my time alone in my room, rather than endlessly being told what a dork I am.

 

[katz]

My first husband was abusive. It didn't take me long to figure out how to shut him down when he calle...

Oh, my goodness!!
I love that line !! (wifes choices) I just wrote it down in my "anything notes" in my phone. I can't wait to use it at home. LOL

 

[Gs172003]

My mom still treats me like a child and I'm 42 years old. Lol one of the many reasons I moved out at 18 and never looked back.