Childhood Untangling feelings

[Bristol]

This is going to be a strange post, i think im thinking out loud but my T and i are working on my relationship with my first ab*ser. Theres some stockholm syndrome there which i understand complicates things but im just wondering how anyone else worked it out or any tips on how i can work it through? It feels like such a massive complicated mess. I know i was a child, T tells me it was all wrong but my heart still, sort of, misses him, classes him as one of the people who abandoned me despite the fact i know it was a good thing he left, classes him as a relationship despite the fact i was 4 when it started. See even im not sure where im going with this!

I just desperately want to make some progress on this but it's all flying around wildly and then i give up engaging with it and avoid it all i possibly can which is getting me no where either

 

[Freida]

I think accepting you were a child so you could both bond with and hate someone is a good start.. And accepting that it's pretty common in abused kids ...they hate their abuser but still miss them.

This is how badly he messed with a 4 year old's mind -- and that is part of what is so horrible. A. 4. Year. Old. Most 4 year olds still believe in Santa Clause and fairies. Their minds are still very empty so they suck up emotions and knowledge like a sponge. The idea is that loving people teach them about the world and how things work in a safe environment. An abused child (and yes -- you were an abused child) learns things that the adults in their lives want them to learn to benefit them...the abuser. They twist the child's minds around until fact and fantasy become one - which is why it is so hard to unlearn what you were taught.

That's pretty much what Stockholm Syndrome is --- when a victim cannot escape and the only way to live is to bond with the captors in a vain attempt to make sense of what is happening to them. Adults who get stockholmed can have an extremely difficult type coming out of it -- and they have coping skills! How in the world would a 4 year old child be able to cope with the horrible things that are being done to them?

I think it's natural that you have "good" feelings about your abuser if you look at it from the idea that it is what helped you cope back then. He brainwashed you into believing you loved him and that you were a willing accomplice in what was happening. Simple as that. In reality - you were 4.Years.Old. A 4 year old cant decide what they want for breakfast and this guy made you believe you could decide if you wanted to be abused.

Now you have to untangle that in a way that lets you understand how horrible this was. And that's going to take time. But you have made a great start!

 

[hithere]

I don't really have any answers for you. May I ask how you work with your T? I have wanted to try and work on these exact same things, but I get stuck with my T and my emotions go crazy. I start feeling like I'm going to be abandoned by my T. Yes, we talk about my feeling abandoned by the t, but I try to tell my T I think these feelings are from the past and are not really about the T. But the t just stares at me when I say that, doesn't really go anywhere with it. It goes nowhere and I'm left feeling extremely sharp pains of abandonment and longing. It is really quite awful. I also miss the abusers on a young emotional level, I think. I've had a few at different ages. Very young, then older kid, then teen. When the abuser becomes important person, It's really a mind screw. when I think of the abuser from early age, the big me is like, "yuk, I don't want anything to do with this person" but the young me has this sense of being abandoned by that person and the way they ended the abuse was actually very damaging to my sense of self. I am trying to figure out how to stay out of that intense pain, without abusing drugs, alcohol, sex, or work. (it's not working) Sorry, no answers here. But I'm curious how you and your t work on these issues. Do you just talk about them? I realize I just may have made this post about me. I'm really sorry about that. You can ignore this post. However, I did want to say you aren't the only one with these "stockholm syndrome" type feelings, if that's what you call them. It will be interesting to see where this goes.

 

[Bristol]

@Freida thanks for taking the time to reply, i need to keep reading what you wrote and get it to sink in, really appreciate what you said

@hithere we have only been on this for a few months in T, but she gives me a topic and i scribble out some notes over the week and she reads them and tries to challenge me on them but we are going really really slow.

 

[Sideways]

For me, working through my attachment to my abuser has been a huge part of my therapy. I plain old didn’t consider him an abuser (he was “the nicest man I ever met”), and he didn’t abuse me (instead, he “went out of his way to help me”).

Honestly, the most significant shift for me? Came when I decided to report him to the cops. 20 years post-fact. The idea was that the warped beliefs were so entrenched that I wasn’t going to be able to think my way out of them. I wasn’t going to be able to will myself to believe something else. It wasn’t about logic at all.

So, reporting him to the cops was a different approach. It was about starting to behave like what he did to me was wrong. Pulling myself up when I started up on those statements about him “helping” me. I didn’t benefit from hearing myself say those things out loud over and over - in fact I needed to start talking about him, and behaving like, what he did was a monstrous crime. Calling him “my abuser”, instead of by his name. Correcting myself, despite it feeling like a betrayal.

It took time, and persistence with behaviours that felt like a complete betrayal to him. But that’s what helped me start to shift when nothing else did. I was re-teaching myself. I was brainwashing myself with a new story - the true story. And it gradually started to take hold. Very gradually.

Everyone’s different, but there was a whole lot of self-compassion that I needed to pull this off. He did give me special attention. He did make me feel important and loved. And I had to allow myself to acknowledge that, and forgive myself for being vulnerable to that.

I also had to acknowledge that the warped beliefs I had taken on about him? Had served a valuable purpose. They’d kept me safe at the time, through an incredible trauma. It was clever of my brain to take on those beliefs so completely. I need to congratulate myself for that, and acknowledge that it served an incredibly important purpose. And then, very gently, remind myself that “you don’t need those beliefs any more Sideways, they’ve served their purpose, and we can let them go now...”

You can probably imagine the sheer terror that comes with finally accepting that, yeah? Which is why these beliefs aren’t going to change overnight. Take it slowly, and try and be as gentle with yourself as you can be. Because there are a lot of difficult emotions that are going to come when these beliefs do start to shift.

 

[Freida]

I was brainwashing myself with a new story - the true story.

That is brilliant!!

 

[Sideways]

@Freida - it took years, but eventually I just plain old abandoned the ‘gently, gently’ approach. It wasn’t getting me anywhere. So if you have to? Fight fire with fire. If he can brainwash me to believe the ridiculous, I can brainwash myself to believe the truth.

 

[Freida]

If he can brainwash me to believe the ridiculous, I can brainwash myself to believe the truth.

YES!!!!!!!

 

[Bristol]

@Sideways thank you for sharing, i think part of the battle is knowing im not the only one. Like you say its brainwashing, i know a child cant have an adult man as a boyfriend in the adult sense but thats what he had me believe and thats what still makes me feel like i was part of it. Its going to be a long old road but its a start.

 

[Freemartin]

It's not a start - you've come a long, long way alredy. You seem to be making great progress. Really.

 

[Mach123]

It all seemed like love/sex to me and the realization that sex/love is the same now is a point I came to. How could my sexuality have been fully developed before puberty? How can I feel the same now as I did then? How many of us are there? Some of me at least still exists in a 'then' sort of time warp I guess. Or I disassociate into multiple people. Everything's fine. : )

 

[Bristol]

Today is my first T session since this post and all the new thoughts and im feeling so anxious and afraid of her pushing me on these thoughts. Ive had small thoughts on the idea of him not being the person i thought he was but thats kind of as far as i can go with it right now, i feel like i should have more to give T, more progress to show i guess? Who knows