Christmas: Emotional Numbing

[purple butterfly]

Had breakfast with my three children and had a seafood banquet with my eldest son at Mt Martha beach. My two other children went to lunch at one of my brother's with my father. All my adult children are at my father's (perpetrator) tonight with two brothers' and their families.

I stressed to my children that my issues with my father have nothing to do with their relationship to my father (their grandfather) or the rest of my family. I have always been the glue that has held my family together emotionally. Now I can't be the person organising Christmas etc .

I just feel numb, do not feel a thing. Except today when my eldest son and a brother asked how I was and tears appeared.

How does it work that I am the one alone tonight and yet my father is the perpetrator and he has our family running around trying to make him happy, yet I am the one that has been hurt?

And my emotional numbing, I guess it is a protective mechanism?

 

[ms spock]

I really feel for you as it is a devil of a situation to be in.

You have emotionally abandoned yourself and, of course, that is how you were treated as a child. But it is time to stop doing it to yourself (I haven't learnt this yet myself.)
This time you are doing it to yourself.

If a woman is raped/sexually assaulted by a stranger NO ONE would expect her to socially associate with that man or woman. And NONE of their friends and family would do so either. Yet it is okay to expect someone who has been sexually abused by their father to be okay with social relationships? This is crazy! I have/am crazy.

[DLMURL="https://www.ptsdforum.org/c/posts/307746/like"]I think that stressing to your children that your issues with your father is nothing to do with their relationship is not the best strategy. You are allowing yourself to be betrayed and abandoned again. You are also setting up the next generation to be [/DLMURL]
sexually abused.

If your father had killed some one, cracked open someone's skull or done some other crime you would not do this.

[DLMURL="https://www.ptsdforum.org/c/posts/307746/like"]You mention families - how old are the children allowed to be in this perpetrator's sphere?[/DLMURL]

Allowing our perpetrators to have access to the younger people in our families and communities and allows them to start grooming for access to the next generation.

Perpetrators are always looking for an angle to groom their next victims. It is really sad when those perptrators are our fathers.

Every child in the social sphere of a perpetrator's social is at risk, no matter how cleverly every one thinks that they are watching. They will get to the children one way or the other. My father did.

I am not surprised you are experiencing numbing and it is certainly a protective mechanism.

IMHO you have to model best practice otherwise they just abuse more kids. My father certainly did.

And the family let it happen. What would you have given for some one to step up to the plate, challenge the perpetrator and remove his access to you?

Being the glue that holds such a dysfunctional family together may not be a good thing, particularly for the next generation.

I offer this as my perspective. It may or may not be helpful.

I wish you the best.

 

[Tinyflame]

I just learned that it's ok to feel numb at times- preferable or 'good'/ ok (at times) when things become too much, to regain some strength and be able to come back (and not burn out).
xox

 

[purple butterfly]

Junebug and Ms Spock thank you for your thoughts.

Ms Spock I thought I should clarify, my father has emotionally abused me all my life, no sexual abuse occurred.

 

[ms spock]

Okay My Apologies purple butterfly for my misunderstanding.

I still think that the same applies. Emotional abuse lays the foundation for a child, then an adult, to be abused in a variety of other emotional abusive ways by emotional vampires, bullies, sociopaths in the work place, psychopaths in the work place, emotional abandonment, being manipulated, invalidated, rejected, isolated, ignored, corrupting, exploited and terrorizing and generally put down and not cared and loved for properly.

It would have been best if you were not the one on your own (unless you want to be)
on Xmas Day night. This means your father is once again isolating you, ignoring you, rejecting you and invalidating your needs. Your father is exploiting your good nature. He has groomed you and trained you through years of emotional abuse to tolerate and put up with this behaviour. (So there with you honey, so there!) The rest of the family could have caught up with him another time. Once gain your father is not valuing your worth or putting down your need for solace and love on a tough day.

We cannot condon, endure nor enable abusive behaviour in whatever form it manisfests itself. All other abuse has the foundation laid by emotional abuse in my completely lay person's opinion.

Excluding an adult child or are younger child from family activities (by making impossible, too humilitating and too uncomfortable for you to go) is an extension of his emotional abuse to you.)

I could write so much more but I don't want to be too full on when you have just had such an emotional experience.

You are not to be the sacrifice in your family. If I could tell you how not to be that or how to change that I would give all the knowledge I have. I was the sacrifice in my family and when I grew I did it to myself or allowed other people to keep treating me like that.

IMHO emotional abuse and emotional abandonment are the most difficult to deal with, define and heal from.

With Much Care,
ms spock

<edited by Nicolette: when pasting from an external source please use a raw editor such as notepad otherwise your text formatting is out of alignment with forum standards example paragraph 4 post#13>

 

[purple butterfly]

Ms Spock said:

IMHO emotional abuse and emotional abandonment are the most difficult to deal with, define and heal from.

Ms Spock thank you for your have a deep understanding of this issue. Everything you have said rings absolutely true with me. I am going to take some time to ponder your words.

 

[ms spock]

Oh Purple Butterfly,

Be kind to yourself. You were shaped by years of your father's emotionally abusive behaviours - probably not long after you were born via such things as no response to infant's spontaneous social behaviours, leaving an infant alone for prolonged periods, failure to engage child in day to day activities, failure to protect child, displaying inconsistent emotions and so on and so forth. Be very gentle with your self.

Give your self time and space.

Read up on emotional abuse when you are up to it. The six or seven basic types (usually with long lists of what each type consists of) and pick out the ones that apply to you. There are a couple of good books around about verbally abusive relationships.

Print it out to remind yourself.

And when you are ready you can make a copy for each member of your family so that they understand the issues. (And that might be some years down the track.) And doing that naming the abuse and defining it so precisely will take away your father's power and also allow the rest of the family to identify and understand why they feel so bad about themselves at times.

If the above is not helpful just stick with being kind and gentle to yourself.

ox
ms spock

 

[Heather]

How does it work that I am the one alone tonight and yet my father is the perpetrator and he has our family running around trying to make him happy, yet I am the one that has been hurt?

I feel for your situation. My daughter and I spend the holidays alone without extended family basically for the same reason and it SUCKS.

 

[purple butterfly]

((Heather))

 

[mamachick]

Heather, my daughter and I spent the holiday alone as well for the same reason, and I am grateful that we have each other. I do understand that feeling that it sucks. Quite amazingly, she said some really insightful and positive things about the holiday that has made me very proud.

Emotional abuse can be so slippery. A person can abuse one member, and not others. I have a sister in town and two nieces. My sister is 12 yrs older and I lived with her from age 13. She was like a mother. However, she made me her scapegoat for anything that went wrong in her life, so now we dont speak. I am very close with one niece, and the other is a drama queen and instigator, so I avoid her as well.

I do think our grown children need the freedom to have relationships and participate with who they like. Im guessing that pb, you are choosing to not go to your fathers. I would not either. When my niece has something, I will go if my sister is out of town or working and is not attending. I dont want to be around. Mt children have pretty much discovered on their own how my sisters treat me, and have even tried to drag them into saying something. It is something that I have felt they need the freedom to choose, and with my blessing.

On the other hand, its not unreasonable to pick either the eve or the day to have them all together with me, or with you, without inviting those we chose to not be around. Also, to think ahead for next year, and remembering this, plan to have some friends over to fill the emptiness.

I also agree with Junebug, numb is ok sometimes. Just be good to yourself

 

[mamachick]

I use to do much more holiday entertaining, I have found that good friends are better than family for some of us. So many of my good friends have moved away as well. I think my resolution (which I usually do not make), is t make a conscious effort to meet new people and make some new friends, and also attend to the friendships I have been neglecting.

 

[maddog]

Oh Brat, these have to be my resolutions too, as much as I try to avoid making any. I think that's the point, and part of the problem... I tend not to make any, and I need to.

Finding a way to conquer my issues around interpersonal relationships and communication has to be one of my priorities in the immediate future, because the damage being done may never be undone if I don't.

Frankly I have no idea how I'm going to achieve this, but I need to try.

Maddog