Childhood Feeling Like Your Childhood Was Taken Away From You?

[SeanCharles]

I think we spend the first half of our life, childhood, suffering from one crisis to another, and then the second half of our life, adulthood, trying to deal with the consequences of our childhood.

@RussH I totally agree 100%!! :tup:

 

[Michelle K]

@Hansgrohe No, you are definitely not alone. As I work on my healing and recovery, it's reassuring to hear other people's stories so I know I am not terminally unique. There are others who get me. My family did not, and my parents don't show any signs that they will ever gets me. My father recently tried to shame me (he wasn't successful), and I am 50 years old. So I have given up any hope that I will ever have a respectful, supportive relationship with my parents. It's one of the things I have to grieve, along with the childhood I never had.

I recently came to terms with the fact that my ideas about what childhood is are misinformed due to my own experiences. I became aware that I believed that childhood was practice for adulthood. But I can see that this is only because that is what my parents made it for me. My childhood was filled with chores, adult responsibilities, schedules, emotional intensity, many forms of abuse and neglect, and chaos. My brain wired itself to become hyper alert, hyper responsible, and to prefer structure and order (and to know how to create that).

As a parent, I find myself struggling to find ways to accept, tolerate, and celebrate the natural messiness, loudness, I-don't-know, mistake-filled, trial-and-error, silly, goofy, no-reason, change-my-mind, I'm-not-sure, helpless, unpredictable, inconstant, can't-justify, curious, difficult, energetic nature of childhood. Witnessing my kids go through this experience presents many opportunities for me to grieve what I never had myself. My parents couldn't and didn't accept, tolerate, and accept this in me. I was expected to be neat, clean, moderate, sure, polished, self-possessed, accomplished, dignified, justified, helpful, constant, predictable, self-sufficient, knowledgeable, expert, and easy. When I wasn't, I was shamed and punished. So I was constantly trying to figure out ways to shut down my nature and be something I wasn't. Knowing that now makes me feel incredibly sad and angry.

The last two weeks I have been considering the difference between acceptance/celebrating and tolerating/allowing. In my mind, there is a huge energetic difference, and we all know when we're experiencing one or the other. When we experience the latter we feel judged and shamed and we shut down. When we experience the former, we feel loved, safe, and like we have permission and safety to explore and expand. I'm working to extend that to myself and others, especially my kids. We can stop the cycle of abuse by not passing it down to one more generation.

Thanks for starting the conversation.

 

[Ocean5]

I don't think I'm alone when I state this. Whenever I look back at what has happened to me, all the abuse (physical, mental, emotional, verbal, etc in many different forms), one thing that always strikes my find is this feeling of having my childhood stolen from me. I was never given a chance to have friends, pursue basic interests, or even some of the corny stereotype teen stuff that you see on TV.

I can relate and often feel the loss.. I really try not to judge, and give people benefit of doubt, but how could people let a child grow up in such fear??? Then others judge me..

I had few friends, and always always --- kept away from so called home - even though small town. That limited friends. So I was mostly left alone...just friends at school.

Stolen describes it.

Had a very caring (and well meaning) Uncle tell me last year, that's the "problem with you and your brother" you aren't close to anyone. He is right, but maybe there is a reason we were never close to anyone...

 

[kagamine]

I don't feel like I really had a childhood,I feel like I have a backstory. The one that actually happened, that I talk with my T about, and the one that my family likes to think happened, because nobody likes to acknowledge they idly stood by and neglected you to the point that strangers could treat you like a ferris wheel. I experienced and witnessed things no child ever should, but the worst part is how damaged my ability to attach to other people is. I don't know how to be a good friend or a good boyfriend because I get so damn claustrophobic in any sort of intimacy. Yes, you could say I feel my childhood was taken from me, I'm just starting to get really angry about it

 

[Ocean5]

worst part is how damaged my ability to attach to other people is.

Can relate - most common comment, or question, I get when I start to get to know someone (which is rare lately) is they don't understand how I can be single? Compliment from a very attractive nice person - then you see they are REALLY confused by this and concerned.

(if they only knew... )

---
“Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow.
― Mary Anne Radmacher

 

[Deleted member 27340]

My childhood is a painful memory and even though I've suppressed so much. It's a dark place and I don't want to go there. It feels like there is a huge, huge black hole inside me where my sense of self should've been, but isn't because of how I was raised and the things that happened to me.
I also have nights where I crawl up and hold my stuffed animal tight while I cry because no one ever held around me and protected me as a mom. That mommy-love I can see my friends get from their mothers, and have seen jokes on in memes, but never felt myself... something inside me is missing and never developed because I never had that. I guess it's my "self".

I definitely feel like my childhood was taken away from me, but the worst part of it is catching myself wishing it would all be fine again between me and my mother... That she'd suddenly, for whatever reason, be nice and love me. Unconditional love. I'm unable to fully grasp that term, actally.

I was also bullied at school and excluded from everyone else on top of the stuff at home. What they did the most was stay away from me because I was disgusting and fat (they reminded me all the time) and if they accidentally came in contact with me they'd pretend like their body was etching as if I was made of acid. They'd sometimes do their same when looking at me. Like the sight of me etched their eyes. They would also gather up in huge groups at the same time to do things like that. Once in seventh grade they were probably 40 people standing around me yelling names and doing gestures that referred to jokes they had. Five of them got a rope and tried to catch me with it, at that point I walked away. I remember walking and telling myself "Don't run, you lose if you run... Walk, just stay calm, and walk away."
That ruined the possible friendships I could've had, no one could be with me because they'd get bullied too. I used to have some people I walked a little around with at recess, but I never really got a real friend and I consciously started to be alone instead for so many reasons. I isolated myself.

Sometimes I wish I'd just get a second chance...

 

[Deleted member 27340]

I'm also pissed because I'm intelligent and learn so incredibly fast and my potential is great and my dreams are the same as my potential, but I completely lack the ability to work with things and consistency isn't my thing and no matter how much I want to do as good as I possibly can in school there's no way because my mind won't allow it. I don't have mental capacity to more than what's already going on up there, and I know it's going to RUIN my future and make my dreams impossible to reach because I CAN'T THINK. It's so frustrating and if I were to get my full potential back (I don't think it's possible) I'd have to recover and that'd need lots of therapy, right? Yeah, working hard in trauma therapy and school at the same time will do SO good on my grades!!
I want to study evolutionary development(al biology) at either MIT or Cambridge or a similar university. Now I'm starting high school after summer, and if I get accepted I'll be skipping a grade and going straight to the IB program without the pre-IB year. If that's going to be possible I need to work through maths and science for the pre-IB year, but then I first need a job so I can get the books and then I need to actually do that work. If I had had a mother wo was right in the head I might've possesed the work abilities needed. All this is just making me pissed and it's so hopeless all of it ugh.

 

[PoopyPTSD]

I know how you feel. I have to read books on parenting to know what is normal. Sometimes I even have to watch family sitcoms to see how normal people should interact...... Pretty sad....

 

[katz]

Unconditional love is something that I have always wanted. I want to be loved for who I am and not what I can do to "him". Is this too much to ask? Is it something that I will never have? Is it out there, anywhere?

 

[RussH]

True unconditional love is almost impossible to find from other humans, but it is very possible to find someone who will love you for who you are, and not want they want you to be.

 

[Chava]

Sort of a weird opposite in some ways. I was free-roaming a lot as a kid, and isolated myself within nature or with books. I have good memories of my connection to nature and the excitement I found in learning. But since I adapted via this isolation, I feel like I've been mostly robbed of my adulthood. I don't know how to do or enjoy close relationships with people. I don't have a family and probably won't (don't want one), but have a hard time even believing I have any friends or people I can ask for help. The isolation was a form of safety as a kid, and as I get older it often feels like it's just destroying me.

 

[Mit]

It seems I was luckier than many here. I did have a childhood. I had friends and played like most boys do. I loved being outside and nature the most.

I felt I had two lives. The normal boy my friends, and others saw, and the other life I desperately wanted to keep secret because it meant there was something wrong with me, I was abnormal and it was humiliating.

Because of that I spent my childhood hiding and masking my true emotions. This had more of an impact on my teenage years and that shadowy period as a young man.

I know I can't change the past. The reason I'm here is to strive to make the present and future happy for me and my loved ones.