Childhood Seeing Your Abuser

[littlelotte]

I have an issue that I’ve been told by my T is very uncommon, but maybe someone here can relate. I apologize if this is already a topic.

I was physically and sexually abused by my older brother for most of my childhood. It stopped when he went to college and wouldn’t be home for more than a week at a time, though even then he could get physically abusive if I made him mad. When I was in elementary/early middle school I would tell my parents about some of the physical abuse, but they didn’t believe me. The claims were too outrages and odd sounding (one I frequently brought up was how he would smother me by sitting on my head). At that age (~8-11 yrs old) I didn’t understand there was a difference between the types of abuse.

Due to no one believing me, I burred everything in order to survive. If you had asked me in late high school or early college about it, I wouldn’t have known it happened. I completely blacked it out. During the time I blacked it out, I came to have a good relationship with my brother, even to love him.

When I was 23, the guy I was dating drudged it up. I had a bit of an emotional breakdown. The T I started seeing then was not very good and I went back to burring it all and my relationship with my brother was fine. Then I saw my brother emotionally abusing his fiancé when they came to visit and that started the PTSD.

Now, I really want to still love my brother and do family things where he is there, but the hate is also back. For the time, I am avoiding seeing him with the exception of going to his wedding almost a month ago. The wedding was extremely difficult, and has set me back quite a bit.

I’m hoping to go with my parents to visit him and his wife at some point, probably next summer. My hope is that by me being able to control how much time I spend around him and by being able to easily get away, I can slowly work through my issues with being around him.

Has anyone else ever been in a similar situation and worked through it? I’d really appreciate advice on how to be able to healthily spend time around my abuser.

Just so you know, I have not talked to my brother about what he did since the memories have come back. Things that he has said make me wonder if he buried it too, in order to deal with the guilt. I don’t want to bring it up with him and ruin the “good” relationship we do have by arguing over how he treated me as a child.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Every therapist I've ever had has told me to get away and stay away from my abusers because my healing depended on it.

 

[littlelotte]

My family is very tight knit and does a lot together. My T understands my desire to work past things so I can be around him again and is trying to help me get there. Currently, I feel like I'm the one keeping my family from doing things together (yes, I know it really is his fault). I enjoy doing family things, and I really want to get back to a place where I'm okay being around him again.

My parents are very supportive, and both believe me now. They understand this is a problem and I may not be able to work through issues enough to be around him again, but that is what I want and they will support me however it works out.

 

[Chava]

I don't know what to say about the sexual abuse in this case so won't comment on that. But I wonder how close you were to your brother in age. Smothering you was NOT okay, but if he was also very young, the question might be why he did that or why your parents weren't involved. My brother was a total as$hole. He taped my mouth and nose shut so tight I had to run to the nearest adult as I was suffocating. I'm sure he didn't intend to kill me. He was young, stupid, and under-disciplined for some reason. Things changed dramatically as he grew up. I don't excuse it violence of this level between siblings, but I understand it is complex and really have to consider age and context. We do have a good relationship now but I honestly don't see him very often since I live far away. We also had fun together as kids, he protected me from a couple jerks on the bus, we built things together, etc. But we also fought badly and sometimes he went too far. I think the big thing here is that we were in an already chaotic household (nobody was helping us learn appropriate boundaries) and we were very close in age. If your brother was much older, or doing this at an age when he should have clearly known better, that would sound very abusive.

Keeping strong ties with abusive people causes us to undermine abuse or block of parts of our reality. If your brother abused you and you think you can create a better relationship with him, I hope your therapist can help you work through what is realistic and how you can be true to yourself. I'm sorry your parents didn't believe you. That does not sound outrageous to me at all, just scary and dangerous.

 

[rightkindofme]

I'm of the "cut ties and don't go back for more abuse" camp. That is all that worked for my family. If your brother is abusing his fiance, are you going to be ok with finding out in a few decades that you rebuilt your relationship with your brother in order to find out he is abusing his kids? Could you report him if you did find out?

Having a relationship with an abuser is very complicated. If he is still verbally abusive with his partner then there is a low chance he really "changed". He just hasn't abused *you* in a while because power dynamics change.

 

[Sandstone]

I understand your position, and I think it can't be that rare. My primary abuser was also an elder brother. He "only" sexually abused me, never physically, so it's slightly different. The other difference is that he treats his wife well,and I've no reason to believe there has been any other victim.

I did talk to him many years ago about it, before my PTSD manifested itself, and he was genuinely sorry, though I think still quite selfish. We subsequently became fairly close, and in many ways I see us as fellow victims of a very strange childhood. So I don't think it is necessarily essential to cut ties, but I think if you are to go on seeing him it has to be on a basis of truth between the two of you, and most importantly of physical and emotional safety for you.

It does sound as though he may not be acknowledging his responsibility, and if that is the case, then I think you are in danger of sacrificing your self fro your family, and that will prove unhealthy for you. I will add that since the onset of the delayed PTSD, I haven't been able to cope with seeing him, but I miss the innate understanding that we had of the complications in our thinking.

 

[GWhizz]

I guess a lot of people on here can probably relate to you unfortunately. I was severely abused by my older brother (now deceased), my father, and most of my family, and also my brother and father's unhealthy (drug/alcohol abusers) friends. The only one I still saw up until recently was my father. But having a child brought on my ptsd and from then I could not be around him. I agree with @Solara. Though my T never encouraged me either way to cut ties with my family, she certainly supported and empowered me through the process. It's still very recent and raw not having any extended family. But I did meet my mother a couple of times in the past few months to see if I could try to have some sort of a relationship with her and her with my son. But no, she still denies the abuse and enables my father and does everything to protect him after failing to protect me.

I commend your ability to still see your brother and your parents after it was a collective failure and ignorance on their part for not listening to you or taking you seriously. You now have ptsd to contend with and it's just not acceptable that any of it was ever allowed the happen.

Please be careful and do not push yourself to see him or feel that you need to pretend. What happened to you was real and serious. It needs to be validated so that you may begin to heal.

 

[Justmehere]

I don't think your situation is all that uncommon for trauma survivors. Many people struggle with if/how to have any relationship with their abusive family members, including abusive siblings.

Every therapist I've ever had has told me to get away and stay away from my abusers because my healing depended on it.

This is what I have been told as well. I have done a lot to reduce contact and have lots of boundaries and plans to stay "emotionally safe."

I have tried to maintain relationships while working through the trauma. It didn't work. Now, I take a lot of space as I work on processing and integrating the trauma. I find it nearly impossible to heal and also engage with them. I keep trying anyhow. When I don't gave contact with my abusive family members, my healing process goes a lot better and faster. It also comes with a lot of heartache and pain and grief - because it means accepting what happened to be and the loss of the relationship. When I got back and have contact with abusive family members, I am able to do larger family get togethers, and it's nice, and yet comes at a cost.

I have learned that if I do spend any time around abusers, I do it in a very limited way. I never have the time be open-ended. If it is a wedding, I plan to go for two hours. If it is a holiday dinner, I stay for one hour. I tell people beforehand the amount of time that I will be there for, and tell them I have "other commitments" but I don't tell them why. I go and then I leave at those times. I also bring a friend, or someone "outside" of the family system. It's not enough to just have other family members there. Bringing someone from outside my family is not so much about keeping me physically safe as it is to help my brain remember and stay integrated. To not get sucked back into the family system and the family belief's and forget what was done to me, and get into unhealthy patterns of relating.

Something important to remember is that while the sexual abuse is over, the unhealthy family system and other unhealthy behaviors are not over. In the past, your brain had to forget what happened to you in order to keep the relationship with them, and that's a big warning flag that it's not fully safe. So it would be wise to plan for that reality if you choose to be around them while you are still healing from what happened.

I did reconcile a relationship with an abusive family member once - we did find a way to have a relationship again. But he never apologized or took an responsibility for the past. Still, I thought it was a good thing that we were able to be around each other again and have it be ok. Really ok. Our relationship was good. Except it wasn't. The old pain I had from what he did in the past became more and more suppressed, and it didn't go away. Instead, it came out sideways at other times and places, and my PTSD got worse and worse. Then he eventually hurt me - not physically or sexually like he did in the past, but still hurt me. I was in town for a family gathering and I became very ill. I went to an urgent care and he called and the things he said and did were so hurtful. It set back my recovery and healing years. He saw that weakness, and my aloneness, and took advantage of the tiny bit of measure of relationship that we had again.

I learned the hard way what I had been told by others: maybe the relationship with a past abuser can seem good, but good relationships don't ignore past abuse like it never happened. Good relationships happen when people own their roles in past problems and actively make amends, if possible. Without that, it eventually leads to harm one way or another.

My therapist urges me cut ties completely from my own family "just for a little while" so that I can process trauma from a family member. She tells me, "its' not for forever, but just for now, to give yourself a chance to heal." It just hurts so bad to do that. I survived the trauma, it's too hard to let go of all my family too, even for a little while.

 

[Deleted member 20280]

I was physically abused every day of my childhood by a brother ten years older than me. At the age of 7 I was raped anally by my then male babysitter. then again at 9 and every weekend until I was 13 years old.

I am now forced to live in supported accommodation in the town I grew up. (Yes dear I am in Bideford).

I now walk past this Bastard every single day as he still lives here. Some exposure therapy that turned out to be for me.

He does not recognise me, But I recognized him the very first time I smelt his aftershave 9 months ago. He was stood about ten feet behind me in a super market Queue.

I will never forget,

But I will recover and make right for all the wrongs I did last year when I had my breakdown.

Laurie.

 

[Namenotdiagnosis]

Santa Laurie I am lost for words for the abuse you suffered. I hope you find peace and the bastard gets locked up, or suffers in the way he had made you suffer for all them years .

 

[scout86]

In a conversation about people who abuse other people, my T said a problem with dealing with them is that they truly don't see that they've done anything wrong or caused any harm. I had to have sort of a close encounter with an abuser a couple of months ago. My T said that, more than likely, the individual wasn't dreading the like I was because none of what happened was really much of a blip on his radar screen. He said he thought that was sad, but that in his experience it was true.

So, maybe that's why your brother seems not to remember. The person in my case, a cousin, seems not to remember also.

Having said that, it seems to me that unless he HAS seen the error of his ways and changed, your brother is still a bad person and not someone that you, or anyone you're responsible for should be around. You don't play with rattlesnakes. You just don't. They do not make good pets, they are not cute and cuddly, they are dangerous, even when they don't look like they are. I'd put your brother in exactly that category. If he wants to talk about it, he can go along to a therapy session..

 

[Justmehere]

My parents are very supportive, and both believe me now. They understand this is a problem and I may not be able to work through issues enough to be around him again, but that is what I want and they will support me however it works out.

Would your parents and your brother be open to doing family therapy?