Hi, so I’ll just get straight to it.
Growing up, I was the middle child of three. My dad was abusive in all kinds of ways, and I don’t remember much of my childhood — just snippets here and there. I remember watching how depressed my older sister was, and I can only think that my survival instincts kicked in. I learned to behave in whatever way I thought my mum would approve of.
From as young as around 8, I felt like I was my mum’s therapist. I remember how disgusted and uncomfortable I felt when she would talk to me about her and my dad’s sex life — how she never wanted to have sex with him and how she didn’t find him attractive. My mum comes from alcoholic parents, and apparently my dad’s father used to use a belt on him. They believe that this was considered normal in their generation.
I want to get this part out of the way.
When I was around 9 or 10 (Year 5 in the UK), I was woken up one night by my mum. My brother was being sick, and for some reason she told me to get into bed with my dad so that she could be closer to my brother. It doesn’t really make sense to me now, but at the time I just did what I was told.
When I got in to bed, My dad started touching my arse, and then he started rubbing my vagina, back and forth, I completely froze. He was half asleep. After a while, I slowly got up and tried to sneak out of the room so he wouldn’t see me. As I reached the door, somehow he saw me in the dark. Yet, somehow, he hadn’t realised that it was me who had been in the bed.
He sort of flipped over onto his other side, shocked, I think he thought I was my mum. She is petite, and at the time we were around the same size.
I can’t even remember what happened after that, but nothing has ever been said about it. I often wonder whether my dad has completely given up on me because of the trauma he knows he caused. Or does he think I’ve forgotten? Has he forgotten?
A few months after this, one of my best friends decided to dry hump me. We had a sleepover club and she wanted to play house, she was the mum and I was the dad. Again, I didn’t really understand what was going on.
Then, when I was 14, I was sexually coerced by an 18-year-old guy. I said no around 20 times before I eventually gave in. He didn’t use protection, so afterwards I voiced my concerns. His response was, “Never say that after you’ve just done it. Massive turn-off, and don’t turn into a slag either.”
I walked home crying, knowing I couldn’t tell anyone because I was convinced they would blame me.
I also remember my dad hitting me a lot growing up. I remember him charging towards me when I had no idea what I had done wrong, and just hitting me over my head, my back, shoving me from my chest, or hitting my legs and arse.
He was lazy and didn’t like doing anything around the house, so he didn’t need to lift a finger. Instead, he made me and my sister a “chore” list and timetable and stuck it to the wall. Whenever I forgot to do one of the chores, he wouldn’t remind me. He would just charge towards me and hit me, sometimes without me even being aware he was coming because I had earphones in.
I remember being around 12 when my mum told me that it was better not to say anything back to my dad when he was shouting at me because it would only make things worse.
So that’s what I did.
It wasn’t a normal telling-off. He would get directly in my face, shouting, with his finger in my face and shoving my chest. Any little slip-up could mean I would get hit, and it scared me because he had no control over his rage.
Once my sister left home at 17 because she was still being hit, I started staying out with friends as much as possible.
It wasn’t until my brother was around 14 — I was 18 at this point — that things finally reached a breaking point for me.
My dad had been shouting in my brother’s face, and my mum was trying to break it up. I thought he was about to really hurt my brother, so I ran down the stairs and shouted, “Who the f*ck do you think you are? Come on then!”
I acted like a literal lunatic.
My dad turned around and chased me back up the stairs. My brother walked out of the house with no shoes on, and I jumped onto my bed. I told my dad that if he laid one finger on me, I was calling the police.
It was almost like he had a reality check when I mentioned the police. He walked out.
Then my mum came into the room. I was shaking, and I told her, “I can’t do this anymore. I’m moving out.”
She then started crying and told me that she felt like she was reliving her childhood all over again. She told me how much she hated my dad, how much she couldn’t cope with everything, and how she had apparently tried to get away when we were younger but, because they were married, nobody offered her anywhere to go.
My parents are still together and are still married.
I eventually moved to a different country because I wanted to get away and have a fresh start. But even though I had physically removed myself from my dad and everything I had grown up around, I couldn’t escape him in my head.
All I could hear was my dad’s voice calling me “thick”, “lazy” and “ugly”, or threatening me. It was like his voice had followed me even though he was no longer physically there. I could be in a completely different country, away from my family and the environment I had grown up in, and still hear those things in my head.
I later became a mum myself and now have two daughters. Around this time, I was diagnosed with OCD and CPTSD. Looking back, I can see how much of what I was experiencing was connected to everything I had been through, although at the time I didn’t fully understand how deeply it had affected me.
My oldest daughter has severe autism, and I have no choice but to ask my mum for help with the girls. It’s exhausting having to pretend most days.
My mum says things to me like, “I never thought our Kim would turn out the way she has,” which makes me feel like I’m a complete failure.
I’ve recently been diagnosed with Graves’ disease. She knows very little about it, and I can’t help but wonder whether my nervous system has simply had enough of taking abuse.
I feel like a shell of the person I want to be.
I have severe anxiety. Everyone describes me as quiet or shy, and one woman even told me that she thought I was timid. That really knocked my confidence because I genuinely feel like I’m coming across as confident, even though that clearly isn’t how other people perceive me.
I haven’t had a moment to actually stop and heal properly, and I’m starting to think that I will never be 100% happy.
I’ve dealt with suicidal ideation for most of my life.
Growing up, I could never focus properly in school. I was constantly daydreaming, and my parents simply accepted that I wasn’t smart. They never got me any support or tried to help me.Looking back now, I think I was dissociating a lot, but nobody noticed.
I’ve never told anyone about what my dad did to me because I always thought it would split up their marriage. I didn’t want to be the reason for that.
I think what I’m struggling with now is trying to understand how all of this has affected me, because I’ve spent most of my life just surviving it. I don’t really know what is trauma, what is me, and what parts of my personality have developed because I’ve had to protect myself for so long.
I’m hoping that by writing this down and speaking to people who understand PTSD and complex trauma, I might finally be able to make sense of myself and start healing properly. Should I tell my mum about the SA that my dad did? Also what therapy would you recommend?
Growing up, I was the middle child of three. My dad was abusive in all kinds of ways, and I don’t remember much of my childhood — just snippets here and there. I remember watching how depressed my older sister was, and I can only think that my survival instincts kicked in. I learned to behave in whatever way I thought my mum would approve of.
From as young as around 8, I felt like I was my mum’s therapist. I remember how disgusted and uncomfortable I felt when she would talk to me about her and my dad’s sex life — how she never wanted to have sex with him and how she didn’t find him attractive. My mum comes from alcoholic parents, and apparently my dad’s father used to use a belt on him. They believe that this was considered normal in their generation.
I want to get this part out of the way.
When I was around 9 or 10 (Year 5 in the UK), I was woken up one night by my mum. My brother was being sick, and for some reason she told me to get into bed with my dad so that she could be closer to my brother. It doesn’t really make sense to me now, but at the time I just did what I was told.
When I got in to bed, My dad started touching my arse, and then he started rubbing my vagina, back and forth, I completely froze. He was half asleep. After a while, I slowly got up and tried to sneak out of the room so he wouldn’t see me. As I reached the door, somehow he saw me in the dark. Yet, somehow, he hadn’t realised that it was me who had been in the bed.
He sort of flipped over onto his other side, shocked, I think he thought I was my mum. She is petite, and at the time we were around the same size.
I can’t even remember what happened after that, but nothing has ever been said about it. I often wonder whether my dad has completely given up on me because of the trauma he knows he caused. Or does he think I’ve forgotten? Has he forgotten?
A few months after this, one of my best friends decided to dry hump me. We had a sleepover club and she wanted to play house, she was the mum and I was the dad. Again, I didn’t really understand what was going on.
Then, when I was 14, I was sexually coerced by an 18-year-old guy. I said no around 20 times before I eventually gave in. He didn’t use protection, so afterwards I voiced my concerns. His response was, “Never say that after you’ve just done it. Massive turn-off, and don’t turn into a slag either.”
I walked home crying, knowing I couldn’t tell anyone because I was convinced they would blame me.
I also remember my dad hitting me a lot growing up. I remember him charging towards me when I had no idea what I had done wrong, and just hitting me over my head, my back, shoving me from my chest, or hitting my legs and arse.
He was lazy and didn’t like doing anything around the house, so he didn’t need to lift a finger. Instead, he made me and my sister a “chore” list and timetable and stuck it to the wall. Whenever I forgot to do one of the chores, he wouldn’t remind me. He would just charge towards me and hit me, sometimes without me even being aware he was coming because I had earphones in.
I remember being around 12 when my mum told me that it was better not to say anything back to my dad when he was shouting at me because it would only make things worse.
So that’s what I did.
It wasn’t a normal telling-off. He would get directly in my face, shouting, with his finger in my face and shoving my chest. Any little slip-up could mean I would get hit, and it scared me because he had no control over his rage.
Once my sister left home at 17 because she was still being hit, I started staying out with friends as much as possible.
It wasn’t until my brother was around 14 — I was 18 at this point — that things finally reached a breaking point for me.
My dad had been shouting in my brother’s face, and my mum was trying to break it up. I thought he was about to really hurt my brother, so I ran down the stairs and shouted, “Who the f*ck do you think you are? Come on then!”
I acted like a literal lunatic.
My dad turned around and chased me back up the stairs. My brother walked out of the house with no shoes on, and I jumped onto my bed. I told my dad that if he laid one finger on me, I was calling the police.
It was almost like he had a reality check when I mentioned the police. He walked out.
Then my mum came into the room. I was shaking, and I told her, “I can’t do this anymore. I’m moving out.”
She then started crying and told me that she felt like she was reliving her childhood all over again. She told me how much she hated my dad, how much she couldn’t cope with everything, and how she had apparently tried to get away when we were younger but, because they were married, nobody offered her anywhere to go.
My parents are still together and are still married.
I eventually moved to a different country because I wanted to get away and have a fresh start. But even though I had physically removed myself from my dad and everything I had grown up around, I couldn’t escape him in my head.
All I could hear was my dad’s voice calling me “thick”, “lazy” and “ugly”, or threatening me. It was like his voice had followed me even though he was no longer physically there. I could be in a completely different country, away from my family and the environment I had grown up in, and still hear those things in my head.
I later became a mum myself and now have two daughters. Around this time, I was diagnosed with OCD and CPTSD. Looking back, I can see how much of what I was experiencing was connected to everything I had been through, although at the time I didn’t fully understand how deeply it had affected me.
My oldest daughter has severe autism, and I have no choice but to ask my mum for help with the girls. It’s exhausting having to pretend most days.
My mum says things to me like, “I never thought our Kim would turn out the way she has,” which makes me feel like I’m a complete failure.
I’ve recently been diagnosed with Graves’ disease. She knows very little about it, and I can’t help but wonder whether my nervous system has simply had enough of taking abuse.
I feel like a shell of the person I want to be.
I have severe anxiety. Everyone describes me as quiet or shy, and one woman even told me that she thought I was timid. That really knocked my confidence because I genuinely feel like I’m coming across as confident, even though that clearly isn’t how other people perceive me.
I haven’t had a moment to actually stop and heal properly, and I’m starting to think that I will never be 100% happy.
I’ve dealt with suicidal ideation for most of my life.
Growing up, I could never focus properly in school. I was constantly daydreaming, and my parents simply accepted that I wasn’t smart. They never got me any support or tried to help me.Looking back now, I think I was dissociating a lot, but nobody noticed.
I’ve never told anyone about what my dad did to me because I always thought it would split up their marriage. I didn’t want to be the reason for that.
I think what I’m struggling with now is trying to understand how all of this has affected me, because I’ve spent most of my life just surviving it. I don’t really know what is trauma, what is me, and what parts of my personality have developed because I’ve had to protect myself for so long.
I’m hoping that by writing this down and speaking to people who understand PTSD and complex trauma, I might finally be able to make sense of myself and start healing properly. Should I tell my mum about the SA that my dad did? Also what therapy would you recommend?
