• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

Told my parents

Status
Not open for further replies.
You were super brave to tell your parents. I am so sorry they reacted the way they did. You have done nothing wrong. Your parents are responsible for their own reactions. And it was the perp who caused the original pain.

Victim blaming tends to be a way to protect from feelings of helplessness, fear, powerlessness, etc. So, if you blame the victim you can believe there was a way to prevent the situation. That doesn't excuse your parents reaction, but it might help you understand it's not about you, but about their inability to deal with their feelings. With time they may come around and be supportive. Of course, none of that diminishes the pain of how they've reacted. I am truly sorry.
 
Cain,
your parents don't emotionally support you because they simply don't know how, this is sadly all to...
Yeah, I’m thinking that the reason my mom isn’t being very supportive is because of what happened to her sister. Her sister was molested by their neighbor and later developed schizophrenia. My aunt is very severely ill and she’s probably never going to be able to live on her own again. My mom probably has a very intense fear of me growing up and developing that. It’s kind of disheartening though, because it feels like she’s not going to believe or see all of the progress that I have made with my mental illnesses. She says she thinks I’m on a bad path but in reality I’m doing better than I have in years.

You were super brave to tell your parents. I am so sorry they reacted the way they did. You have done no...
Thank you. I really am hoping that they’re able to deal with it and that everything will eventually be normal again. I’m still kind of confused why they’re acting like this; my mom was a CPS worker for 17 years, I thought she would know how to handle this.

You didn’t cause your parents pain. He/she/they did.

:hug:
Thank you

What the...?

Crying = normal response.

Victim blaming you for being abused = horrible way to resp...
Thank you so much. I don’t know why it’s so hard for them to grasp why I didn’t tell anyone for so long. I was a scared kid.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
We work with what we know, our experiences shape our decision making and our reactions. I see but one victim, your mother who seems paralyzed by fear and unable to see what is right in front of her. You own your story, your strenght is feasable through your thread.
The positivity of your decision is something that nobody can ever take away from you. The weight lifted from your chest, you merit that.

I'm proud of you.
 
I'm sorry to hear about their reaction.
Her sister was molested by their neighbor and later developed schizophrenia. My aunt is very severely ill and she’s probably never going to be able to live on her own again. My mom probably has a very intense fear of me growing up and developing that
There's a lot that they don't know about schizophrenia, but I think there's a lot of agreement in the scientific community that a traumatic event can't cause it. Trauma can be connected to the onset of symptoms - but the genetics would have been in place and the disorder would have shown up, irregardless of there being a trauma.

And I can understand why your mom would make that connection. I just want to tell you that it's not how schizophrenia 'works'.

I've got schizophrenia on one side of my family tree, and other mental health problems on the other. Both of my parents carried a tremendous amount of anxiety around what - if anything - we, the kids, would end up being diagnosed with. Because genetics does play a part in some disorders, there's a reality to the fear. There's also guilt.

I'm not saying ANY of this to excuse or explain away your mother's reaction, or your father's. Their responses were bad, bad parenting - but that has everything to do with them/their influences/their own feelings and fears, and nothing at all to do with you.

The bit that has to do with you is about getting the right kind of therapeutic support. I saw in your intro thread that you do see a therapist, but not vey frequently. Have you disclosed this stuff to them? And do they have the right training/experience to support you? Are you able to see them more frequently?
 
Hey Cain,
Very brave of you to tell your parents.
My abuser was a woman, I'm a woman, yada yada.
I think that made the disclosure of the abuse harder for them to handle. Attitudes about homosexuality often impact this stuff in weird ways - like it's more sinister and wrong, because it's not your typical man-young girl mould. I think a lot of that is unconscious, but it does happen.

Also - a New Zealand study in 2006 found the average length before disclosure of sexual abuse was about 16 years. Spontaneous disclosure, ie telling someone immediately, is vanishingly rare. The statistics were only grouped male/female and hetero/homo, but... if you're AMAB with a male perpetrator, your likelihood of disclosing spontaneously goes down, and the time between the event and your disclosure goes up. I dunno if those statistics would help your mum, but they helped mine.

Also, you're telling them now! I copped the whole "deceitful" schtick too. Where I am now I refuse to apologize for that. I did the best I could at the time.

Why does God need to forgive you for what some arseholes did to you? If your dad wants to pray, he should pray that God forgives the perpetrators, not the victim.
 
Cain, I am really sorry about all of this. I've lost my relationship with two siblings because I told what my father had done when I was growing up. This really, really bothered me. After several attempts, I have come to accept that I love them, but they are wrong, and I don't have a relationship with them. It was so hard and took a long time, but I feel free. You've been re-traumatized and I am so sorry.
 
I told my parents about being abused when I was younger, and I’m worried that they now think it’s their fault or that they could have prevented or stopped it somehow. I worked so incredibly hard to hide it from them for years, there was no way they could have known. My mom cried a lot when I told her. I don’t know how to make them feel secure again. Can’t stop feeling like I caused them even more pain by telling them.
Update
First of all, thank you all so much for your messages of support and for your advice and knowledge. I haven’t been able to respond to all of them, mostly because talking about this is so exhausting. I am reading each reply, though. Thank you all so much.
Secondly, it’s become very hard to talk to my therapist. I learned that one of the conditions of her being a mandatory reporter is that she has to report all sexual activity that involves a party that is 15 or younger. I’m still a minor, and my abuse happened when I was 13. So... for another year, I won’t be able to talk to my therapist about my abuse without it being reported to the police. Extremely frustrating.
Lastly, things have gotten a lot better between my parents and I. I’ve talked to them a lot about everything, and I think they’ve processed it all. It still feels kind of different and tense, but it’s a lot better than before. I think everything will be alright.
 
I'm sure everything will be alright.

If you want some info about your therapist being a mandatory reporter...

Even if she does report it, I doubt anything will come of it. Like... She needs to ring up and make her mandatory report to an agency, who then decide to act or not act on it based on the level of "danger" to a young person. You can ask her for more info about what she had to do, or you can google the laws and the process in your area. I get that it's scary that it's outside your control. How it works here is that they report to child protection, who are unlikely to do anything in your case, rather than to the police.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top