"He was just a kid"

[ninja]

I'm currently in a bit of a spiral, so there's that.

No matter how much progress I make, I always seem to end up back to "but he was just a kid". My brother was abusive physically, emotionally, and sexually. I struggle to call it sexual abuse because I really don't think it was ever for his gratification but rather for the power - he thought it was fun and funny. I also struggle because it often (at least based on what I remember) happened in the context of him being physically dominating - holding me down, choking, etc. He was 6 years older and this all occurred when he was 9/10-15/16. He seemed to enjoy it, and that really messed me up. I would kick and scream and he would laugh and grip harder. Early on, his friends were sometimes involved. We moved states and that changed that dynamic.

My parents knew some of what was happening but not all of it. Apparently I told them after the first instance of sexual abuse. My mom told my dad, and my dad got so mad he choked my brother, who was able to get away. As a result, my brother catalogued that experience as, "they can't do anything". Nothing further was done after that. My mom frequently would say in exasperation and confusion, "I don't know why you guys have such bad sibling rivalry, my brother and I got along so well. [insert story about her and her brother getting along]". To this day, my mom still sees my brother as a loving, angelic, compassionate, caring, generous person. He killed himself 6 months ago, which has just intensified these beliefs for her, it seems. ETA: I should add that it is really just my mom who sees him this way. He lived a complicated life filled with severe substance use. Most people I’m aware of saw him as pretty self-centered and not the most empathetic person.

I started having panic attacks when I was 6-7, which resulted in issues going to school by the time I was 9-10. My parents, the therapists, and the teachers all assumed I was experiencing anxiety and needed to learn how to be resilient and work through it. My brother's response to me was often "I was just joking, why can't you f*cking take a joke".

I believe I am weak. He was a child, how could I have been so affected by a literal kid. He told me how he would kill me in my sleep, and I believed him. I was stupid enough to believe him. I genuinely believed he might kill me, but he was a child, that was never really a genuine possibility. He repeatedly held me under water, but we were mostly in public pools, and lifeguards often would intervene. My brain logged this as "omg panic I can't breathe and he's not letting go and I can't get air" rather than "I ended up being okay and my life was never really at any risk".

It is not the same as abuse by an adult. It is not the same as domestic violence or sexual assault. Because he was a child. I feel so stupid for how much this has impacted me. Legally, this shit would get me laughed out of the room. I hate the idea that I am just extra sensitive and don't have as much internal resilience as others, so I resist accepting it, which might just be keeping me stuck?? I don't know.

I've really tried to walk myself through the differences between adult-perpetrated abuse and sibling-perpetrated. I've worked to understand the differences in assumptions around innocence and expectations of responsibility. I've tried to understand that the impact matters and to stop focusing so much on him. I've tried to get out of the trauma comparison land. But I don't trust myself. I need the external barometer because my internal one is untrustworthy and biased towards making things bigger than they are. I'm just so tired of arguing with myself over all of this and what it means about me. I.e., If this isn't really a big deal and it feels like a massive deal, I need to know that about myself so that going forward when things happen in life I know that I am just a person who tends to have a bigger reaction to smaller things.

I've been in this particular hole so many times and I just want to stop. There's got to be a some way to see this so that I stop landing here.

 

[Ecdysis]

Can you accept that you experienced this AS A CHILD with a child's knowledge and understanding of the world?

And what you experienced is WHAT YOU EXPERIENCED.

Now, as an adult, you have a different "perspective". You can "look at" those experiences and see different layers and aspects.

I understand the confusion. (I deal with similar aspects in my childhood trauma and I assume many others do too.)

But I think it's still possible to honour what you EXPERIENCED at the time.

I'll give a mundane example: If a bank teller is abducted in a bank robbery and the robber repeatedly threatens to/ motions to shoot them... And then after a few days, the whole ordeal is over... And then after, say, a month, the police finally locate the weapon used and it turns out it was a fake plastic gun, with no bullets in it... Does that actually "change" the experience of the bank teller? I realise it changes "something"... in retrospect... on some cognitive level... But does it change what those days as a hostage were like?

 

[Rose White]

Your words are impactful. I don’t know how to respond yet but I’m thinking about this concept of the superego that I’ve been working on which is a kind of bullying internal voice that demands enjoyment. And it kind of sounds like that here, some internal voice that says something (not unlike what your brother used to say) along the lines of, “It’s no big deal! What’s wrong with you?” And not dissimilar to what your mom said, “Why couldn’t you just be ok with your brother, that’s the right thing to do!” Then the question is, who is the “I”—the one commanding you to “be ok” or the one being commanded? And then what is the purpose of going in the hole?

I have zero answers, just what I’ve been thinking around a similar dynamic and am currently unsure how to deal with it. A says that the purpose of psychoanalysis is to “something-something the superego”—overcome? Cope? Ignore? Realize? I can’t remember, but anyway, just wanted to share the story I’m working with for the inner bullying voice.

 

[ninja]

Can you accept that you experienced this AS A CHILD with a child's knowledge and understanding of the world?

And what you experienced is WHAT YOU EXPERIENCED.

Now, as an adult, you have a different "perspective". You can "look at" those experiences and see different layers and aspects.

I understand the confusion. (I deal with similar aspects in my childhood trauma and I assume many others do too.)

But I think it's still possible to honour what you EXPERIENCED at the time.

I'll give a mundane example: If a bank teller is abducted in a bank robbery and the robber repeatedly threatens to/ motions to shoot them... And then after a few days, the whole ordeal is over... And then after, say, a month, the police finally locate the weapon used and it turns out it was a fake plastic gun, with no bullets in it... Does that actually "change" the experience of the bank teller? I realise it changes "something"... in retrospect... on some cognitive level... But does it change what those days as a hostage were like?

I can understand intellectually, but there is an emotional disconnect. I think I’m angry. It’s messy and possibly very self-indulgent and inconsiderate of others. I’m angry that others get to exist in a culture where there aren’t expectations for them to view the person who hurt them as complex. Adult-perpetrated abuse of a child is criminal. Full stop. I am convinced that if I were to bring this up, what would run in the back of many people’s minds is that he was just a kid. The outrage, the protective feelings, the clear “that was wrong and the abuser is f*cked up” doesn’t happen because my brother was a kid and we leave space for their innocence and redemption (as we should!). My partner thinks I am incorrect about how others would perceive this. He thinks I am projecting my family out onto the world. I think my family’s views and responses are a more intensified version of the world’s because they are closer to it/what happened.

I can understand that learning it was a fake gun, the bank teller would still have to process through their beliefs that it was real, juxtaposed with the reality that the threat wasn’t actually what it seemed, and whatever feelings would come up as a result of that. I don’t know how they would integrate those realities. It would be up to them and what they needed I guess. I wish I could imagine where they might land with it.

Thank you

 

[Ecdysis]

He thinks I am projecting my family out onto the world

I was just thinking this exact thing before I got to this sentence in your post...

To your family, your brother is a sacred cow. So he is that in your subconscious too.

For the rest of us... Well, some naive folks may take the just-a-kid stance. But millions of ppl who for example went through bullying at school that wasn't just "mild" will know very, very well what young perps are like.

 

[Ecdysis]

He repeatedly held me under water

I can't breathe and he's not letting go and I can't get air

He told me how he would kill me in my sleep

I genuinely believed he might kill me

I was stupid enough to believe him

Honestly? I fail to understand what was stupid about your reaction... (I get what you mean from an adult perspective, but...)

If I'd experienced that as a kid, I'd have thought just the same thing.

And mayyyyyybe a kid getting a bit too "carried away" with physical games like who's stronger in the water... I could see people interpreting that as "Oh well, that's just kids being weird and unfortunate... They grow out of that eventually..." or something like that.

But if he's accompanying that with threats to kill you... And not just in the off-hand way that siblings will say to each other "You stole my chocolate bar - I'm gonna kill you...!!!"

But saying "I will kill you IN YOUR SLEEP" - like whoaaa, that's majorly, majorly f*cked up...

And that's him *intentionally* blurring the lines so that you literally can't differentiate anymore whether "almost drowning you" (what would've happened if the life guard had been distracted by something else?) and threatening to kill you in your sleep are basically the same big blurry category or not...

I had an argument about this 20 years ago with a shitty therapist... Where I said if young kids are watching intense fights between their parents with physical violence... And the kid is literally scared that, say, Dad is going to kill Mum... But that in the hundreds of abusive, violent altercations over the years... Dad does beat Mum to the point of needing hospital treatment, but never *actually* kills her...

Like then what? It's not so bad? Because RETROSPECTIVELY, NOW the person knows that Dad didn't kill Mum? I don't think so... For years and years, that kid lived with the very real potential terror that if things escalated just that tiny bit more, then yeah, it would literally be a homicide.

And in situations like that, even adults can't predict how a situation like that will develop and turn out. Even professionals that accompany people in domestic violence situations like that, worry that their client may eventually not survive, cos the partner escalates to a point of no return.

So then how on earth is a kid meant to "realise" that maybe the likelihood of Dad killing Mum is "only" about 20% and not 80%?

I mean, I realise it's *even worse* for the kid, if it does eventually turn into a homicide... But I don't understand how a situation that just barely scrapes by turning into a homicide is somehow "better" or "less traumatising"?

I think you seriously need to start validating what you went through as a kid.

With the (difficult) acceptance that adults will have rightly or wrongly viewed the world differently back then and also now.

There's all sorts of things that absolutely terrify a little kid, that feel like "nothing" to an adult.

Just to name one horrible example that happens to kids who are severely neglected: If parents leave their toddlers at home, over night, in a dark and empty house, with out food, because they're desperate to go and drink and do drugs somewhere... Then to that toddler, that feels like abandonment and terror and a fear that death is iminent. A (callous) adult may say "Well, they're not going to starve to death in the space of 10 hours on their own, so, so what?" But I seriously doubt that anyone with even an ounce of compassion would agree with that.

So I think you may need to seriously give up on the idea that a child's and and adult's perspective need to somehow neatly line up and be on the same level of experiencing reality.

And yes, things like the dark, big dogs, getting lost can feel utterly terrifying to a little kid and seem "harmless" to an adult. But one doesn't have to invalidate the other.

And sure, there's even some healthy logic in parents trying to tell kids "It wasn't that bad" as regards stuff like the dark, a big dog, or getting lost. In a good sense, parents try and show/ teach children that they don't need to be that scared of these things.

But I think that logic becomes really twisted when it gets intertwined with minimising abuse...

 

[Jud19e]

I'm currently in a bit of a spiral, so there's that.

No matter how much progress I make, I always seem to end up back to "but he was just a kid". My brother was abusive physically, emotionally, and sexually. I struggle to call it sexual abuse because I really don't think it was ever for his gratification but rather for the power - he thought it was fun and funny. I also struggle because it often (at least based on what I remember) happened in the context of him being physically dominating - holding me down, choking, etc. He was 6 years older and this all occurred when he was 9/10-15/16. He seemed to enjoy it, and that really messed me up. I would kick and scream and he would laugh and grip harder. Early on, his friends were sometimes involved. We moved states and that changed that dynamic.

My parents knew some of what was happening but not all of it. Apparently I told them after the first instance of sexual abuse. My mom told my dad, and my dad got so mad he choked my brother, who was able to get away. As a result, my brother catalogued that experience as, "they can't do anything". Nothing further was done after that. My mom frequently would say in exasperation and confusion, "I don't know why you guys have such bad sibling rivalry, my brother and I got along so well. [insert story about her and her brother getting along]". To this day, my mom still sees my brother as a loving, angelic, compassionate, caring, generous person. He killed himself 6 months ago, which has just intensified these beliefs for her, it seems. ETA: I should add that it is really just my mom who sees him this way. He lived a complicated life filled with severe substance use. Most people I’m aware of saw him as pretty self-centered and not the most empathetic person.

I started having panic attacks when I was 6-7, which resulted in issues going to school by the time I was 9-10. My parents, the therapists, and the teachers all assumed I was experiencing anxiety and needed to learn how to be resilient and work through it. My brother's response to me was often "I was just joking, why can't you f*cking take a joke".

I believe I am weak. He was a child, how could I have been so affected by a literal kid. He told me how he would kill me in my sleep, and I believed him. I was stupid enough to believe him. I genuinely believed he might kill me, but he was a child, that was never really a genuine possibility. He repeatedly held me under water, but we were mostly in public pools, and lifeguards often would intervene. My brain logged this as "omg panic I can't breathe and he's not letting go and I can't get air" rather than "I ended up being okay and my life was never really at any risk".

It is not the same as abuse by an adult. It is not the same as domestic violence or sexual assault. Because he was a child. I feel so stupid for how much this has impacted me. Legally, this shit would get me laughed out of the room. I hate the idea that I am just extra sensitive and don't have as much internal resilience as others, so I resist accepting it, which might just be keeping me stuck?? I don't know.

I've really tried to walk myself through the differences between adult-perpetrated abuse and sibling-perpetrated. I've worked to understand the differences in assumptions around innocence and expectations of responsibility. I've tried to understand that the impact matters and to stop focusing so much on him. I've tried to get out of the trauma comparison land. But I don't trust myself. I need the external barometer because my internal one is untrustworthy and biased towards making things bigger than they are. I'm just so tired of arguing with myself over all of this and what it means about me. I.e., If this isn't really a big deal and it feels like a massive deal, I need to know that about myself so that going forward when things happen in life I know that I am just a person who tends to have a bigger reaction to smaller things.

I've been in this particular hole so many times and I just want to stop. There's got to be a some way to see this so that I stop landing here.

I wish you wouldn’t beat yourself up like that. If it was important to you and traumatic to you then it was. It doesn’t mean that you are weak. He was older than you and should have known better. It was real and many “ kids” have seriously hurt others and sometimes even killed. It was a very real experience. I have a wonderful therapist. She says that you should except yourself and forgive yourself. You are your own worst critic. For me it was my father. My own father sexually abused me for four years plus and my crime was that I did this under force and many threats but I was never able to tell anyone until I had a niece and she was in danger. But it is all about forgiving yourself and accepting that you were vulnerable and a victim. Now you are a survivor. You have nothing to feel guilty for.