Childhood Completely Confused...

[Mammo]

Hello
Not entirely sure where to begin with this...

I'm in a bit of a surreal situation, where it looks like my therapist/psychologist is treating me for some form of PTSD/C-PTSD...I can see this is what he's doing...I've read enough on PTSD/C-PTSD that there are some things which sound familiar e.g. I seem to have certain reactions and life outcomes...but I just don't believe the purported reasons as to "why".

I know this may sound stupid, but I feel like I'm going insane, that I have symptoms and am being treated for something I don't "believe" I have.

I left my previous therapist because she had flat out said that my siblings and I were subject to physical and emotional child abuse, and that we "should have been taken out of the home at least temporarily." This was a shocking thing to hear, and I still don't believe it. So I went to get a second opinion, and this new therapist just basically refuses to answer the question.

For months I've been re-playing my childhood in my head, doing legal research etc, and trying to find an answer. All these labels are to me very serious, and I look at them, and don't see "me".

What is this? Where can I get "answers" if therapist won't provide them? Has anyone else been in a similar situation?

Sorry, I know this is a weird question. Appreciate any thoughts/advice.

 

[Justmehere]

Are your questions regarding if you were abused or not as a child? or if you have PTSD or not?

 

[Mammo]

Hi Justmehere,

Both I guess, they're interrelated...when I look at some of the descriptions of "impacts/effects of C-PTSD" a number of them fit. But, C-PTSD has an assumption of "abuse" and I don't consider what happened in our family in those extremes. Don't get me wrong, not "great" by any stretch, but I reject the label of "abuse" and the term "trauma" feels like nothing more than a synonym for the same.

Sorry, I know this probably makes no sense.

 

[Bees Are Awesome]

I was abused when I was young, both physically and emotionally. However, I always thought that's how everyone was treated, that it was "normal." Just like my dad's excessive drinking, I thought everyone did that. It wasn't until I started therapy a few years ago that I learned that the things that were done to me and around me were actually abusive and not normal at all. It wasn't okay for my Dad to hurt me and it wasn't okay for my Mom to say the things she did and ignore what was going on. No one told me that those were the reasons I started dissociating in my early teens. No one spoke about it. Ever.

I guess what I am trying to say is, do you think that you may have experienced abuse and trauma but just thought it was normal because that's all you knew? I hope that makes sense. I'm not trying to push you into thinking it was or wasn't. I just wanted to share my experience.

In any case, I hope you find the answers that you are looking for. This forum has a lot of good information on it as well as a whole lot of people who care and are supportive. Stick around. :)

Welcome to the forum.

 

[Mammo]

Hi Unraveling1,
Thank you for the reply.
Like you, I thought everyone's house was the same as ours. After all, on the outside, we would seem like the "perfect" family on multiple fronts - there's was probably the same behind closed doors, no? I've tried speaking to other people I know, and I give them examples of stuff that happened, and they all sit there looking at me like I have three heads! So this clearly suggests not "normal" - but, when people say terms like "physical child abuse" to me, I think broken bones, fractures, black eyes etc...and I think from a legal perspective, that is how "physical abuse" is defined. We had none of that - the thing in our house was that my Dad would hit us for really random and trivial reasons, which I don't think is normal, or even ok, but it doesn't sound like "abuse" to me.

I just feel like therapists are sort of imposing these "labels" on me and I don't recognise myself in them.

 

[Saria]

Welcome to the forum Mammo :)

Labels and how we interpret them can be pretty interesting. Like, while it can be helpful in taking our experience seriously (and in diagnostic considerations etc.), it can also feel like an unfamiliar broad description which isn’t really “you”. At least it was like that for me. Fortunately, we're not labels. What’s interesting is, that a label doesn’t change what we’ve experienced. But it can change how we view that experience, I guess.

Have you talked with your therapist about how the whole “labeling” issue makes you uncomfortable? Maybe it can be therapeutic just to explore the reasons for why it makes you uncomfortable? Do you know why you don’t want the label “physical abuse” for example? What would it mean if you have been a victim of physical abuse? Does it make it more real? If you imagine a friend telling you that he/she were hit several times growing up, would that change how you think about it?

I don’t know your story, and I’m not going to tell you what you have or haven’t been through. In my case, my dad never hit me, but would scream and shout, throwing things towards me. It was impossible to predict when it would happen next, so I lived in constant fear, walking on eggshells. Believing every outburst was my fault because I was such a defective human being. That was abuse. No broken bones or black eye, but still abuse. I moved out 7 years ago (I’m 25) but I still live in constant fear that something bad will happen if I do something wrong, always scanning people around me for small signs of irritation.

I don’t know if this helps at all, but anyway I hope you'll find the support and advice you need in this forum :)

 

[Anarchy]

Welcome Mammo,

When the T that I was going to for relationship counselling spotted that I was flashing back and using dissociation to leave the room, and told me it looked like I had PTSD.

I didn't believe him, and never went back. That was about 5 years ago.

It's only about 8 months ago (last August) that it clicked, yes I really do have it, but how? I couldn't remember any "traumas".

The thing is, trauma is subjective - it is the meaning and interpretation which you put on it, at that time which counts for giving you PTSD.

Even in the three months or so before you were born, all sorts of genes were getting switched on and off in response to your mother's diet, emotional state, and environment, to prepare you for the sort of world that you were going to be born into.

There is some good science looking into stressing either parent before conception (in rats) and that has measurable effects on the stress hormones in the offspring throughout their lives.

Taking the stressing into the last third of pregnancy, and that not only disregulates the stress hormone levels in the pups, but for the next three or four generations too!

In humans, that is also demonstrable with examples of people who had their last third of gestation during the "Dutch Hunger Winter", and in turn their children (check youtube for Robert Sapolsky's lecture on epigenetics for some discussion of this).

With those examples of parental and pre natal stress giving measurable effects for several generations in both animals and humans, the idea of trauma during birth and during the months or couple of years before you have conscious memories, becomes much easier to understand and believe:

for example, a forceps delivery that stretched your brachial plexus (several nerves crossing in your neck - if there is pressure put on it, the pain is so intense you quite literally cannot move),

isolation from physical contact and connection in an incubator, or,

surgery (it was usual to do it on neonates without any aneasthesia or pain control, because everyone "knew" that they couldn't feel pain (bullshit! they dissociate)).

You can see from those examples that your "trauma" may have been from before you have conscious memories

It may also have been from something which you cannot remember because of dissociative amnesia

High levels of stress hormones cause the hippocampus, the part of the brain which organizes memories, to stop working. Traumatic memories tend to be in fragmentary form, sometimes with a smell or a sound triggering a feeling of intense fear or anxiety, and you don't know why.

I'm not suggesting that you have been sexually abused, I'm merely using this as an example;

There's a documented example of a child of about five years old, who could not remember the face or name or anything about a former baby sitter, and had no conscious memories of sexual abuse, but when given anatomically correct dolls to play with, re-enacted the events recorded in a porn video made by the abuser of the abuse. (cited in Herman's "trauma and recovery").

Sorry if this feels a bit like the matrix or a Philip K Dick story - it did to me.

There is a general school of thought that you should "remember" and reconstruct the memories as part of the healing process.

I'm more and more coming to the opinion that if you have a lot of early shit, that is a good way to make your symptoms worse or even re-traumatize yourself.

People like Laurence Heller are emphasizing more and more the idea of building on what we have in the present, rather than getting bogged down by dredging through endless shite from the past that doesn't make any sense, and perhaps never will, and that we can not change - but we can change the present and expect to change the future.

sorry for being so long, and welcome again
Anarchy

 

[Mammo]

Hi Saria,
Thanks for responding.
I guess I don't like labels for a number of reasons, (i) there's a lot of them, they keep 'breeding'! (ii) when you list them all out, it's quite depressing, and makes me just feel like a complete basket case, damaged goods. Some of them I just don't recognise, and look at it somewhat aghast and think, "No, no, that's not me".

I don't want the label of "physical abuse" for a number of reasons:
(i) Physical abuse is against the law. i don't like the idea of thinking of my Dad as a criminal, or as a child-abuser.
(ii) My understanding of the threshold test of "physical abuse" (at least in the UK, where I'm from) is that you have to have actual-bodily-harm. In my view, this hasn't been met.

Re: "If you imagine a friend telling you that he/she were hit several times growing up, would that change how you think about it?"
It would depend on how, and why they were hit, I think. None of my friends seem to have similar experiences though, which I appreciate doesn't bode well.

I just want to understand where I can go, if anywhere, to get some sort of answer on this, as the endless debate in my head, is driving me up the wall.

Thank you for your help

 

[Mammo]

Hi Anarchy,

That's a lot of information, and a lot of wide-ranging points to consider! Thank you.
I confess I've always been somewhat skeptical about "biologically based" explanations for such things. I've had issues for example with the monoamine hypothesis of depression, which was rammed down by throat in previous years. I always found it reductionist.

The points you raise re: genetic, hormones, pre-natal transference etc are genuinely interesting, and I will try to look into them, as I don't really know anything about it.

thank you.

 

[Anarchy]

I just want to understand where I can go, if anywhere, to get some sort of answer on this, as the endless debate in my head, is driving me up the wall.

There probably won't be a single answer.

All of these things are subjective. It is the meaning which you individually put on it at the time which matters.

You can re-frame that meaning into the present time - realizing that what scared you or hurt you in the past, isn't going to hurt you or scare you now - because you have resources and options open to you now that you didn't have back then.

That being said, although we can remember, we cannot actually change the past. Trying to do so, at best wastes time when you could be doing something in the present.

At worst, the rumination and constant re-playing the scene, goes on and on and drags you down, potentially into depression. Without minimising what happened, it is essential that you accept that you cannot change the event - but you can change how it affects you in the present.

This may help, I've been quoting it a lot - I really am that keen on it. Please ignore the "deprssion" in the title of the audiobook. It is good for far more than depression. Try the first 15 or 20 minutes and see what you think of it.

 

[theotherside]

..
I'm not sure about what you went through...but for me i grew up with abuse but i was treated and it felt like everything was my fault. I was also in denial and still am in a way...putting my parents on pedistals...i guess i couldn't believe the truth because it hurt too much.
I still feel like i'm making this all up. It's so weird. I just want to blame myself. Like say to myself, you were born this way. Nothing happened. Well here are facts..my dad was a child molester. My mom was an alcoholic. I was in an abusive relationship. I got hit. I got my face bashed, i was left for dead, threatened, verbally abused, and more...But i still cant believe this happened to me. It's still probably all my fault..because i was born like this...idk when or if i will ever even believe it. I tell my story but i cant even relate to it..like im telling someone else's story..
I'm not saying this is what is going on with you but i just read your post and i feel that i can relate. My trauma wasnt that bad..not enough to ruin my life all of a sudden out of nowhere...

 

[anonymous]

Simply put, you're in denial. It is a protection mechanism. You aren't yet ready to accept the truth.

Even hitting a child ONCE is abuse. Yes, I'm sure most of us have been hit at one point or another, even those of us who grew up in loving households where abuse wasn't a real issue. But, to have a therapist say that you should have been removed from the house? That's a bit farther down on the abuse scale.

I'm a bit saddened because you hold such a strict view of what abuse is. That is, you believe abuse is only abuse once it rises to a certain level, ie hitting isn't abuse, but if the hitting breaks a bone, that clearly is abuse. Unfortunately its these sorts of views that allow abusive behavior to continue on our society.

Obviously you're seeking out therapy to fix your issues, but you're unwilling to accept the cause of such issues. Sadly, until you can accept the reality of things, you aren't going to heal. Nope, don't even think about it. Well, maybe you can throw a few band-aids on, but true healing? Not in the cards unless you come out of your denial.

And that's fine....maybe you need to continue to struggle awhile longer before you are truly ready to heal. I get the feeling that you're looking to us in order to find more ways to validate the denial of the truth.