Childhood If your parent neglected or abused you, please just say me too

[Rose White]

I’m feeling really bad and alone with my struggles to live knowing what my parent did to me.

If your parent neglected you, toyed with you, f*cked with you, beat you, sold you, or other things parents aren’t supposed to do— you are seen and heard here. If you feel worthless, like a trash can for the world, you are not alone. This thread is for people to have solidarity because it’s so lonely to go through life with this burden.

Please just say something like me too or whatever so I don’t feel so alone.

 

[In the weeds]

I was used, abused, neglected and abandoned.

Me too.

 

[Freemartin]

Me too.
Abandoned, gaslighted, shamed, physically hurt… yeah, you’re not alone. We get it.

 

[Freemartin]

You know that thing where a huge chasm opens right before you. When you’re talking about your childhood and/or family of origin to someone and you share something of the ”not normal” aspect of your family history. And the person you’re talking with just goes …I don’t know how to put words into it … but yeah, you can feel the chasm. It a certain kind of feeling every time, and it always leaves me feeling really alone.

 

[Rose White]

Thank you @In the weeds @Freemartin Truly.

And yes Freemartin you articulated it well. That feeling is so difficult.

I appreciate this thread

 

[Dark.Green.Feathers]

Me too, neglect from both sides, abuse and enmeshment from one. Abandonment in some way from both.
Weird interacting with people who know them because they don’t know. Uncomfortable for both even though one I’m fine keeping in my life, and in a way that makes it more complicated and difficult to come to terms with.

Won’t say sexual because I don’t know but I’m suspicious of my dad and have been terrified of him since my first trauma bubble popped which he has never been parental about at all.

The grief is hard.

 

[PlainJane]

Me too, friend.

 

[Sideways]

Yep, that’s my story too.

 

[Rose White]

Thank you @Sideways @PlainJane @Dark.Green.Feathers it helps so much to hear that.

Weird interacting with people who know them because they don’t know.

This was something that splintered me (unconsciously) as a child. The public side vs the private side. The school events, the parties, the “make a card for your parent” type activities at school. Not being able to tell that it was bad. The word “tell” having multiple meanings: to be able to speak it and to be able to know it.

I think that’s unconsciously why I became a teacher, so I could know concretely (from an outsiders perspective) what children are supposed to and not supposed to have, do, or be exposed to.

It’s also super hard to be a teacher, as inevitably we run up against abuse and neglect, which we do our best to keep tabs on but the emotional neglect and abuse we are least able to intervene with. Spanking is legal in my state so we can’t report parents for that. And sexual abuse is of course the most buried. Being a survivor I have my inklings about certain students but without disclosure there’s nothing we can do other than try to gain their trust.

It guts me that I want to be trustworthy but I struggle with my own feelings of worth. When teens feel worthless I just feel like it makes sense that anyone would feel that way, but I have to mask that and try to shift the focus toward hope. At the same time, if they are not saying they want to end their life and just saying how angry or sad they are I can say truthfully that it’s understandable they would feel that way.

 

[user27357]

me too. cptsd is the egg that hatched a ptsd chicken. Like once i had survived the abuses i knew how to survive all traumas and proceeded to hate all sources of all traumas with passion and fury. It was not s good plan. It was all
my 11 year old brain came up with. Rode that one to the ground, 50 years! working on better methods of coping with the later, ptsd type traumas now.

 

[Rose White]

Thank you @enough I laughed when you said CPTSD is the egg that hatched the ptsd chicken. It’s like the ptsd helps to understand the CPTSD?

 

[user27357]

Cptsd was the primer. PTSD is the graduate work.