Childhood Who Had Earliest Of Early Traumas?

[theshadowoftheliving]

It's all pretty benign on my behalf, but I do wonder how my initial experiences in the world affected me.

I was born too cold, and placed in an incubator for hours before my mother was allowed to hold me.

To this day, my mother brags about how well I slept as an infant. Through the night at six weeks, she claimed, because she put my crib on the other side of the house and couldn't hear me cry.

As an adult - perpetual attachments issues, disaociation, f&,!$ sleep where I'm lucky to catch four or five hours a night.

Was I really sleeping soundly through the night? I definitely wonder.

 

[Mit]

I was given up for adoption at birth, but wasn't actually adopted until age 5. I have no real concrete proof this affected me and if so, how. As a child I was very submissive and compliant, basically desperate to please and desperate to be wanted. I also spent my childhood having regular surgeries for a congenital deformity, which started when I was three. I'm guessing this might add to attachment issues and separation anxieties (in addition to pain and fears associated with surgery).

Oddly I think my earliest memory is of being in hospital. I remember kids in cots, babies and toddlers. I wasn't in a cot but had bars around my bed, to stop me falling out I guess. In the afternoons the nurses drew the curtains on the ward and we had to have a nap. Any sweets brought in for a child had to be put in a communal tin, and were shared out amongst all the kids, two sweets each, every afternoon. I remember a kid in a cot opposite me crying to go to the toilet and eventually wetting himself and then having his legs slapped by a nurse for it. I remember feeling frightened and very alone despite being surrounded by others, I bet most of the kids felt the same. Parents were only allowed to visit once a day, in the evening. I wasn't adopted when I first started having surgery so I have no idea if I had visitors and if I did who they might have been. I don't remember anybody visiting.

I just can't imagine leaving one of my own kids age 3 in hospital for weeks on end and only seeing them for a couple of hours a day, but that was the way things were done back then. Recently my 15 year old son spent some time in hospital. I was allowed to stay in with him. He probably would of been fine if I had gone home at night, but it just felt the right thing to do, and I was glad to be there with him.

Sorry I seem to have strayed off the thread here. Writing out these memories seems to drag up stronger emotions than just thinking about it, which is new to me.

If I were to speculate I'd say these experiences made me more anxious and fearful, insecure and needy.

 

[Chava]

Was I really sleeping soundly through the night? I definitely wonder.

Newborns can't sleep through the night. They NEED to eat somewhere in there. The length of time sleeping increases as they grow those first few months. Have you ever had an eating disorder or similar issues? Just curious. I didn't have normal hunger cues (or any body cues really, except knowing I had to pee...until starting more serious therapy several years ago).

@Mit ...that's how it was for me. And the nurses just changed with shifts, I don't remember any of them. And when my mom was there to visit a bit she brought me to the play room (I was in specialized PICU in a large hospital)... then she left for a cigarette. I don't remember her being there for some of the scaring testing and procedures. But f*ck it because she scared me too. It was like a long dream. But it really happened.

 

[theshadowoftheliving]

@Chava I was treated years ago for an eating disorder, but it never really felt like it fit me. I was underweight, yes but used the disordered behavior to keep the feelings at bay and stay numb enough to continue onward. When I was hospitalized for it, I remember just staring, dumbfounded, at the other girls when they talked about being fat. It was never about fat for me, rather about disappearing and numbing and a slow, passive suicide attempt.

Regulation issues, I'm coming to find out. Recognizing and then responding to hunger. Realizing I need to sleep.

And anger, I have so much anger, that my parents weren't there for me from the very beginning.

 

[UnKnown-Self]

My parents were abusing each other and my sibling before I came along so the the wheels were...

I just realized I never answered the question in the post on how I think it affected me.

I started to write how I think it affected me and the list just became longer and longer and I started feeling stressed.
I cut the post, copied it to a Word document and saved it in my special folder to be looked at when I am stronger. It might be something I share with my therapist in the future.

I think it would have been easier for me, for sure a lot shorter if the questions was, how didn't it affect me.

 

[Chava]

@theshadowoftheliving I relate a lot to that. What would have fit better was "atypical anorexia" but most clinics don't get detailed like that. My eating disorder was largely a form of self-destruction and also an absence of connection to my body, lack of even feeling hungry, etc. But for a while early on it was a bit of work to deliberately starve myself. It also acted as a form of regulation...everything else is subdued when you are starving and stuck in survival mode. My energy when I started eating well was more than I could tolerate and it morphed into physical pain.

 

[Mit]

Thanks @Chava your recollections remind me of one time when I was due to come out of hospital, aged about 10 and was waiting on the ward for my adoptive father to collect me. Perhaps I had misunderstood what time he was coming, or perhaps he was delayed but he arrived several hours later than I was expecting, by which time I had become very, very distraught, so much so I was sedated, despite the efforts of staff on the ward to reassure me he was coming.

After he collected me and we were on the way home in the car he was openly very angry with me, for getting so upset and told me off. He said I knew he would come so why was I so upset....It made me feel even more upset, and stupid and humiliated that I had behaved like a baby and openly cried. It made me even more sure than showing my feelings was not a good thing to do and I tried even harder to mask my distress, be brave, be good, be compliant, no matter what was happening to me.

It's not my father's fault I'm sure. Perhaps his relationship with me was so strong so far as he was concerned that he simply thought of me in the same way as his own biological children, in which case why would a child of his think they had been abandoned.

On reflection, it seems blatantly obvious to me now that a child adopted five years earlier may still harbour fears of abandonment - but I don't think adoptive parents received much guidance or support from child care experts. The memory though still sticks in my mind.

 

[theshadowoftheliving]

@Chava The chronic pain thing is turning into a huge issue for me as I start to eat more regularly. I can't seem to metabolize feeing things in a normal way - I constantly hurt now, in vague, unsettling ways that doctors tell me is just all psychosomatic (but then there are disturbing physical things, like brain lesions and seizures, that I can't get anyone to pay attention to because I have a psychiatric history). I find must restricting sometimes (like these past few days) just to keep the emotions tempered enough to continue on with life.

Horrifying to think it could all cycle back to the basic problem of my exhausted mother ignoring my cries as an infant.

 

[Chava]

Yeah, this all makes sense to me @theshadowoftheliving , aside from early hospitalizations, physical abuse, and sexual assault, I think this developmental piece is probably what really distorts my connection to myself and others. I really felt NOTHING for years, then every sensation became unbearable. I never had a way to listen to and respect my body. It was just this thing I dragged around that sometimes helped me achieve things. Not "me". I have always had the sense of existing a few inches outside of myself....on worse days feeling blown apart like tiny particles scattered for several meters beyond my reach.

@Mit I learned to mask distress so early I don't even recognize it...I think that's what's hard about therapy (and life in general)...is learning that a bad feeling doesn't mean I'm dying. I just don't know what the f*ck it is or what to do with it. Anger scares me because I get sort of nuts. But "sadness" is oddly so much worse...feels like I can't survive it. I suppose I never learned to have these feelings honestly and respond to them. It feels terrible to notice how emotionally behind-the-ball I am most of the time. People don't notice because I isolate myself. I do good work and just don't have real relationships...nobody really knows me.

 

[greycrayon]

I really felt NOTHING for years, then every sensation became unbearable. I never had a way to listen to and respect my body. It was just this thing I dragged around that sometimes helped me achieve things.

it feels good that someone validates what i struggle to put into words. what seems beyond just depression and feeling you have been inserted into a human body that has also seemed to be programmed on self-destruction and you are frozen out of those command controls. for ages i could not shake the feeling that i was a different species who has been domesticated to socialise as a human. i have a feeling that i was a sick fetus, i know for sure that my mum was sick, that's why i had to be born at 29 weeks.

i don't often get suicidal thoughts in my head very often but what i have to fight constantly is my body trying to shut itself down, as if my suicidal impulses arent someone else telling me that i should but rather physically craving for a cigarette of a habitual long-time smoker. i can't seem to shake the feeling of deja vu or re-living a past life that comes with these experiences.

also that comes is finding food difficult to eat, swallow and digest. i certainly did not have this all my life only when i began to go tp therapy and days when particularly triggered. my mum confirmed that i had difficulty eating anything that wasn't pulverised to an inch of its life. i have also had to learn what 'full' and 'hungry' feels like, well, still learning to honour them, but better than i was.

 

[Chava]

feeling you have been inserted into a human body that has also seemed to be programmed on self-destruction

YES! Before I started working with a trauma therapist, many years ago I was seeing a very good eating disorder therapist (that was important at the time because I was trying to starve myself to death since that seemed a little less hopeless than just overdosing, which never worked for me). At the time, the therapist was really puzzled by my level of self-destruction and how I seemed programmed to wreck myself, even while wanting help.

i can't seem to shake the feeling of deja vu or re-living a past life

I really understand this feeling too. I've entertained that thought, though not so seriously. But I do suspect some of it is really strong remnants from early life I do not remember. I have actually been able to understand some early body memories, though it's interesting there is no "normal" way to describe them because I don't know exactly what was happening. I just had to find words to describe the sensations to my therapist. I described the sensations of feeling submerged, or like if I moved or even breathed too deep I would die. Nothing my adult self could do could pull me out of that without carrying around a load of dread and physical pain. I have found that certain sounds help, which makes sense because even a newborn can do something with sound, internally, to "organize" or regulate a bit.

Much is better, but even yesterday I wanted to go to ER. I recognized the feelings and managed to do enough to get through the day without total meltdown or going to ER. On some level I understood quite well that I wasn't dying. I just tolerate painful or difficult messages and sensations from my body quite poorly. I don't have panic attacks or major meltdowns like I used to, but the dread and low-level panic can drag on for days and weeks where I feel trapped in survival mode and it's hard to do things I enjoy or just be present.

Thanks for sharing @greycrayon ...you also put things into words that make so much sense to me. :)

 

[Kimberley]

And how do they think they've affected you?

I had a couple assaults as an adult, one I mostly remember. I...

My older brother was severely mentally disabled. he was 8 yrs older. violent & unpredictable. so much yelling... I still am frightened to the core by yelling. so I was brought home from the hospital into chaos... anxious & distant father, I believe my mother developed PTSD. but she died when I was 20 & only know from other people.