Listing The Good Things

[Venusian]

My psychiatrist wants me to list some good things my parents have done. She is asking me to do this because I have been having a hard time not blaming them for what happened. For many, many years I would make up excuses for them, excuses for why they missed seeing that something so bad had happened to me. For years they missed all the symptoms of PTSD, all the nightmares, all the avoidance, all the over responsibility I took on, the anxiety over everything that I apparently hid behind the illusion of being uninterested but I was probably dissociating or something like it.

I am having a really hard time trying to do this. My parents weren't abusive, the trauma that happened to me was done by a stranger. My parents did not know. My psychiatrist listed off the same things that I have been telling myself for years and even listed here in other threads as to why they did not see it. A few months ago a medical doctor said that the scars he saw in a scan had to have happened when I was preschool age and then said 5 years old, he didn't know about the PTSD and that is how old I was when it happened. He said it had to have been a massive infection that went untreated. I can forgive my parents for not knowing about the trauma because I hid it from them but a massive infection is something else. I have children, I knew when they were sick. I also recalled that I had once stepped on a nail that went all the way through my foot and I didn't cry. I was about 6 and my mother told me it was OK if I cried she could not believe I didn't. If I was sick I could have hid that too. Maybe I do feel pain differently like another doctor said. Or I was dissociating to the point I didn't react to it.

I don't know, I have been thinking about this for days and I have been trying to write this thread for days and all I can think of to start the list is, I always knew they loved me but I say that and I wonder how could they if they missed so much.

 

[franciemarnie]

It may not be time to list the good things, assuming there were any. If it's not time for me to do something suggested, I won't because it's a mild form of force and I can't handle even a hair's breath of that.

I am so sorry for what you went thru. The episode of the nail thru your poor little foot breaks my heart - you already were adept at not crying out in pain. That tells a great deal. Bless you.

 

[Abstract]

Hi Venusian,

When trying to make sense of this one of the only ways I managed was to look at how people are with me in the present. How are your parents with you in present Venusian?

I also think there are two sides to this. One are your feelings of abandonment and hurt/anger and regardless of the where or why these are legitimate and you have a right to acknowledge and process them.

The other is the reasons behind there omissions and how dissociation and denial and other trauma coping skills can hide a lot of things.

I have been struggling a lot in the last year or so as I found out my niece has been diagnosed with a dissociative disorder (when she was about 5 or 6). My family hid it from me. Hearing how her parents and teachers have helped her cope with life to do with this has brought a lot up. It is hard to reconcile not having been helped isn't it?

 

[LisawithPTSD]

It sounds like you were dissociative at the young age. I did it as well. I remember stapling my thumb nail. Twice.

As for whether you are incorrectly blaming your parents. Only you can decide that. I have to deal with similar issues and find this d@mn PTSD is so confusing.

On one hand, I often have misdirected anger when I'm unsure what is triggering me. On the other hand, I blame my parents for not noticing, and if they did, then not protecting me from the abuse I suffered.

Of course, my parents were just mentally unstable themselves. They had their own traumas but I still blame them. I've actually have gone reverse of what your trying to do and was defending them and honoring them when I was younger. But now I realize the role they played in abandonment and emotional abuse and--no matter how small and insignificant it seems to my adult brain-- it was catastrophic to my child self. I feel I'm finally putting some of the blame where I need to.

 

[Venusian]

How are your parents with you in present Venusian?

My mother will ask if anything has come up with the police investigation once in a while if we are talking on the phone. They do not live close by and I can't drive the 8 hours to go visit in person and they can't drive that far either. Other than that they do not ask. It is like it did not happen or they are scared to ask. They lived so long thinking that nothing bad happened to their children only to find out 40 years later that they were wrong and I don't know if they can accept it. They are still not seeing how it affects me now. Every time I talk to them they try and make me feel guilty for not talking to them more. Right now I can't talk to them which is why I started this thread. I am trying to untangle all this in my head, trying to learn how to forgive them so I can move on. They have never said they were sorry for missing all the signs, for not taking any responsibility. I am still dealing with the physical aftermath and I have to do it on my own because no one in my family has ever asked me if I needed help, ever. No one ever listened when I did ask so I stopped asking a long time ago.

It is great that your niece is getting the help she needs and I know that you must feel that too, but yes, it is very hard when you see help given to family members that was denied when you need it too. The same family, the same people but a totally different response.

As for whether you are incorrectly blaming your parents. Only you can decide that. I have to deal with similar issues and find this d@mn PTSD is so confusing.

I think I have learned a few things talking this out. I do blame my parents but not only for what I thought. There is so much more there. It is very confusing, I don't know what basic human interaction is supposed to be like, it was all warped too soon. No one in my life that should have known better saw how much I struggled with it and now I am just lost. Not only did I learn how to dissociate from the bad things in life but the good things too. I think that is something else I blame them for.

I have been sitting here trying to reply and the movie "Eat, Pray, Love" was on the television, I have never watched it before and there are some great spiritual truths in it, but for some reason I feel that it doesn't apply to me. I feel envious that people go on that journey because of something so much less traumatic and come out the other side intact. If they struggle so hard how can we manage when we have to start where we do?

It may not be time to list the good things, assuming there were any.

I think you're right, but like I said in my post, my parents weren't abusive, just not very observant. There were good things, I just can't remember them without seeing all the bad.

 

[rightkindofme]

It is ok if that is where you are right now. We don't have to have unmixed feelings about our parents.

I stepped on a three inch long piece of glass when I was seven. The old man we lived with carried me to the house, disinfected my foot with whiskey, handed me the bottle and told me to drink, then he sewed up my foot with his wife's sewing needle.

Life is crazy. I have a cool scar.

 

[LisawithPTSD]

I only remember bad things, too. I have a hard time remembering the good times in my life. Friends will say, 'oh remember when we did that we had so much fun" and I have no clue what they are talking about. Its like the traumas are so big they've taken over my whole brain.

 

[Hashi]

I would really be struggling with this, I think.

My psychiatrist wants me to list some good things my parents have done. She is asking me to do this because I have been having a hard time not blaming them for what happened.

I don't mean to confuse things any further, and might be saying something irrelevant to how you're feeling, but I personally would need to separate out a) good things your parents have done, b) whether they have at least some responsibility for what happened and c) forgiving them.

I don't think any of those things depend on each other. For example, it's possible for parents to do some good things but still fail their child in other ways - the good things wouldn't alter the failing, in my view. To me, that doesn't affect the potential for forgiveness. Forgiveness doesn't depend on excusing them or even finding the good in them. Depending on whether this was the situation, it would be possible to think they weren't good enough in their role as parents, and they did have some responsibility for what happened, and then to work to forgive them all the same.

That may not apply to you and your parents, and if not then please disregard it.

I really agree with you about Eat, Pray, Love. The book went into much more detail over her anguish and suicidal ideation at the beginning. It was over what to me is such a normal life event, which seemed to happen to her in the least traumatic way possible, that I couldn't get my head round how she reacted. I did like the book and reading about her journey but I struggled with the reasons behind it.

I like what Louise Hay says about this aspect. She says that we're all here to learn but some of us are in kindergarten and some of us are in graduate school. I wouldn't necessarily say Elizabeth Gilbert or anyone else is in kindergarten, but I do think trauma survivors are in graduate school. When I say forgiveness is possible, I don't mean it's straightforward or easy. It's incredibly difficult.

 

[Venusian]

Hashi, my doctor said that holding all that resentment in is just hurting me. That was the reason I brought this up to her because I want to find a way to forgive my parents for something they didn't know they did. There is a lot of resentment inside me that I haven't been able to articulate and didn't know I had until recently. What you said was it exactly. One thing doesn't preclude the other but there are a lot of good things that I have to try and disengage from the bad, I think that is what she was trying to help me sort out. Maybe once I can do that I can work on the forgiveness because I don't really know what it is I am trying to forgive them for. I don't know if I am making sense.

 

[rightkindofme]

I think that whereas it is true that holding on to resentment hurts the person holding on I think that does not necessarily translate to needing to forgive the people who contributed to the problem. You can work on the resentment without forgiving them.

 

[Venusian]

You can work on the resentment without forgiving them.

I have been thinking about what you were saying here and I think that maybe I was trying to skip this step. Maybe it would be a lot easier to do this. Now that I am clearing my head and able to see what resentment I had hidden inside I can work on this and then decide what I want to do. Maybe once I get through this step the forgiveness will follow maybe I will at least be able to talk to my parents again even if I can't forgive them yet.

 

[Abstract]

Venusian, I am sorry I didn't come back as I intended. My head hasn't been clear when I try to find a way to express whats in my head.

I was trying to skip this step

But this is one of the things that was in my mind. Sadly what happens when we push ourselves into feeling something without processing the anger or hurt is that it doesn't get resolved and turns inwards.

I don't think there are short cuts.

Really it sounds like they are still displaying denial behaviours and poor awareness. It doesn't mean you can't eventually accept them for who they are of course. I have done that with my sister. It was a lot of work. And I don't hold her indirectly responsible for any of the stuff I struggled with from the past and that makes it much easier.

I think the biggest no no for me is to try to wear down one set of feelings with another. Each has a right and place of its own.