Sufferer Can't Remember The Original Trauma That Haunts Me - Should I Confront Abuser?

[JustBrandi]

Hi. I've just turned 50. When I was a child, my parents fought a lot and at some point, my mother killed two litters of kittens (and maybe the cat moms - not sure) in front of my brother and me as a way to get back at my father (he blamed her for letting our two female cats get pregnant - why they didn't spay them is beyond me - just ignorant). I have no memory of this at all. A year or so later, my dad died in a car accident while I was on a field trip to Disney World and I didn't find out about it until I got back from the trip that night. I never saw the body. My dad's family shut us out afterwards because they didn't really care for my mother who was always asking them for money.

After I left home for college, I began having nightmares about ME killing kittens. They were extremely disturbing as I LOVE animals (have four cats and three dogs now, usually in the bed with me). I sought counseling for anxiety and depression, but did not have much relief. The nightmares continued and were especially worse if my mother came to visit. I can't watch any movie about an animal dying and if I see even a run over squirrel on the side of the road, I have to tell myself that he's just sleeping and take a new road until the body is gone. Finally about ten years ago, I mentioned my nightmares to an aunt on my dad's side who confessed the whole story to me. That felt right but I can't remember anything and it didn't make me remember. I confirmed the news with an aunt on my mom's side. She didn't realize that my brother and I had witnessed it but she said that it happened. Then she pretty much just wanted to get off the phone.

I have been coping and recently decided to write my family history. I'm not sure how to go about getting information.

I rarely go back to my home town or visit my mother (my mother has moved to another state) and the last time I did, I had nightmares for weeks. They still come and go. But I am interested in my father's youth and I am going to meet with his brother and sister and ask them about his childhood next weekend. I am keeping this information from my mother because she might ask to go with me (she is constantly trying to invite herself down to my house, asks me for money, tells me I have to take care of her when she's too feeble, etc.) I gave her a tape recorder and just asked her to record stories of her childhood for my history project. I don't have much to do with her anymore, but my 45 year old brother and his 16 year old son live with her and I do care about them very much.

I have not brought myself to ask her why she did this. I don't know why I can't. I'm not even sure if it will help. I considered emailing her a list of questions and throwing in one about the kittens at the bottom of the list. I'm pretty sure it will destroy what little relationship I have with her and while I am not that concerned about that, I don't want to mess things up for my brother and nephew. My brother doesn't remember the incident either but he's had severe depression and dependency issues as well as issues keeping jobs and keeping out of trouble with the law.

My mother is not a very nice person. She's cruel. I keep her from my daughter so that she won't hurt her with her rude comments (she's mentioned she thinks my daughter would make a good stripper, or could end up being an alcoholic, sleeping in doorways - all when my daughter was not even a teenager). I love my daughter more than anything and refuse to give my mother an opportunity to damage her.

So, my apologies for the length of this. I am wondering if anyone else who has PTSD from trauma that has been repressed was able to get relief by confronting the abuser or if it just made it worse. If I just avoid the stressors, I'm ok and I can avoid them and still have a normal life. Part of me wants to find out WHY she did that in front of two little kids and the other part of me says she's just a cruel person and I can't trust was she might say anyway.

Thank you for reading and for your advice.

 

[ground crew]

Wow! Awful! So sorry.

So, at some point in therapy, we found mom was my abuser. I was living far away at the time so when I went home, I was to talk to mom about this. Mom is a bit of a rageaholic and I avoid anger so it looked to be a new trauma for me! Now, the nature of my abuse was not sever as others out here, but I did have a bad time of it. They knew I had been in therapy and this would be the next step on my therapy. I tried a test accusation by blaming mom for my lactose intolerance! Jokingly!

Her armor went up, she braced for impact, she loaded photon torpedoes! Clearly we would not be talking about her screwing me up.

I felt bad, unfulfilled maybe cowardly for not doing that conversation. But I realized by their defensiveness they knew. My take away was mom is not happy, insecure and traumatized by her childhood.

Now, my abuse was fairly mild and tempered by real life threat episodes that changed my world, a long and convoluted story that involes a bully, so my behavior was not normal. I realized that my reactions to here were part of the relationship problem. All those things I said about her are true, also true was that I had been traumatized independent of her poor parenting.

I realized that while I was not responsible for nurturing and safety in my world, that was her job, but I actively made her job harder, I was a pain in the ass. I get to claim victim but maybe she has somewhat of an out with me. I can own a small part of all that without hurting me.

But mom, how do you explain the other four kids to grow up with relationship, substance and depressive symptoms? Genetics?

 

[Ghostybear73]

Welcome to the forum :)

 

[Deleted member 1860]

So you only get upset when you deal with a stressor like seeing a movie with animals?

 

[JustBrandi]

So you only get upset when you deal with a stressor like seeing a movie with animals?

I definitely get upset about other things like most people, but anything to do with injured or abused animals, my mother or my home town are the only things that cause my nightmares to come back. Now that you point it out, I guess I'm pretty lucky in that I don't have that many stressors and I can usually work to avoid them.