So I posted another thread quite recently (link here https://www.myptsd.com/threads/is-this-as-bad-as-i-think-it-is.62032/) and I mentioned that there was something else I wanted to post about another time, and though it was a pretty recent thread I don't see the point in waiting for some arbitrary time period. This is sort of a follow up, but about a different time in my life.
Well to give some background, my parents I think hated each other. They'd argue about 90% of the time, and I can't remember exactly how often, but a lot of days ended with my dad storming out after a yelling match and the coming back some hours later. He'd normally instigate a lot of these since he was extremely argumentative about everything. Beyond that he seemed to like screwing people's plans over by intentionally being late or making us be late, and also blaming my mom and me a lot for manipulating him or conspiring against him whenever there was a disagreement. My mom would talk to me after and ask me if I should get a divorce a few times, but even though I pleaded for her to do so since like 5 or 6, she never did, "for my sake".
At some point, maybe forever, I developed some issues with disobedience and and anger. I'd throw sort of tantrums that would usually involve me screaming, breaking things, maybe being violent with my parents sometimes though it wasn't a common thing. This probably started around age 6 or earlier, I can't remember.
Well my dad handled these by restraining me when he thought I was going to have a tantrum. I'm not sure how much of a normal response this is, but it didn't seem particularly wrong, regardless I was ashamed of being so disobedient. The point where it got shitty is that his restraining method involved kneeling on my chest, and me being a 6 year old, that made it really tough to breath. If I complained about it he'd say that the fact I could say I wasn't able to breath meant that I could. If I was struggling too much or being loud, he'd usually put his hand over my face as well. With the combined effect of the knees on my chest and the hand over my mouth and most of my nose (and the fact that tantrums usually involved me crying so my nose was very stuffed up), getting any breath at all was very difficult.
He'd keep doing this until I stopped moving or struggling, which would either happen when I contorted my face to get a bit of air in the sides of my mouth or when I'd start to get dizzy and just give up and consign myself to death, but (obviously) I never did die, and it would always come to an end before I even lost consciousness. I tried telling him afterwards a few times about how I hadn't been able to breath, but he'd retort with the usual thing about how I was being manipulative and lying. To top it all off, he really smelled awful. He had a sort of lingering odor about him that was magnified 100x when he was all over me and I was filtering my breath through his hand. I came up with a decent way of describing it: it's like if you smoked a pack of cigarettes, put them in an ashtray, wrung out a sweaty towel over all of them, let it ferment for a few days, and then go into a public restroom and try smelling the ashtray. The smell and his body heat bothered me more than anything.
For whatever reason I still had tantrums. I never told anyone because I hated being that angry and I was ashamed of it, but I don't know why I didn't stop. It's weird, like I didn't want that to happen, but I kept doing the exact same thing knowing full well the results. Every time after I'd go cry about it in my room because even at the time I had no idea why I was doing it. Now I think it may have just been a reaction to my dad, I can't be around him at all without being angry so perhaps because I was younger I'd just lose control.
It's only recently that I remembered this, I mean I kind of did before, but there was a scene in a movie which really brought it back. Before that I could only sort of see it at a distant third person view and didn't really remember how terrifying it was. It explained a lot when I remembered it fully though, like there's the feeling I get when I see my dad (a sort of anger and fear mix) I'd always feel in other situations, like being too warm, or smelling a smell like his, or other reminders. I had a lot of issues about warmth and still do to some extent, like I can't be have too many blankets lest it triggers huge amount of anger, and I can't have too few or I just feel too naked.
Through the whole time I'd also get derealization episodes fairly regularly, which would be the feeling (it's tough to describe unless you've had it, as everyone else says too) of watching everything like it was a movie I wasn't part of and everything being far away, as well as sort of vague voices in my head. Not intelligible or telling me to do anything, but the thing that it reminded me of most was this passage in the fifth Harry Potter book when he's standing by the sort of "veil of death" and he hears what sounds like a large number of vaguely familiar voices talking just below the volume necessary to hear individual words. Since I've heard derealization occurs in grief sometimes, and how much dealing with death is a theme in the books, I've always wondered if J.K. Rowling was basing those voices on the same sort of phenomenon.
This went on until I was maybe 10ish. I don't know why it stopped, it could be that I started to get too big or I fought back. My mom tells this story that I threatened them at knife point, but I've never heard the details and it occurred at around that time, so it could be why. I have no memory at all of that, I don't even know for sure that it happened and that seems weird. I remember clearly at around 11 that we were arguing loudly as usual and I punched her in the face. It's one of my most shameful memories and I still can't believe I actually did that, so the fact that I could threaten her with a weapon only a year prior and not remember it at all seems weird, if it was just because of an argument I feel like the shame would stick out in my mind very clearly. It also confuses me that they were "cowering" upstairs this whole time, and since there are no doors where they were "cowering" it implies I never followed them upstairs at all, and what makes more sense to me is that I might have pulled a knife as my dad advanced. It's all speculation though, I doubt I'll ever know what happened.
To tie this all back to my last post, my behavioral issues eventually got me sent off to that reformish school I mentioned when I was 12. I don't even know what my behavioral issues were, I think they were there, but most I remember is that I skipped school a lot and would barricade myself in rooms and read books all day. I don't think it ever got too bad honestly, my mom says it did, but when I asked further she gave me the knife story, and then only one more thing about me ripping open a bag of lentils and spilling them on the floor, which is annoying and bad behavior no doubt, but if that's the worst thing that I did then I'm not sure that classifies me as the devil child they always said I was.
Once I went away to school a lot of the issues that I had with anger sort of stopped. I think this was in relation to not seeing my dad, and while the whole school was arguably abusive and I wished I was dead about 90% of the time, I was at least out of the influence of him. I definitely think it would have been better to go somewhere where I wasn't surrounded by yelling and overly harsh rules without any support all the time, but it was like out of the fire back in the frying pan.
This is mostly to get it out there and if anyone has any feedback or anything it would be appreciated, but I guess there are two actual questions. One is the title here, why would a child keep being so disobedient knowing that the consequences would be so awful? The other one is kind of related, I mentioned I skipped school to read books a lot, and I was also wondering why I might have done that if it would get me away from him? I tried everything else to avoid him (walking home from school alone, staying in my room, preparing my own meals in the dead of night) but the easiest thing I had was school which I never went to, even when the school at that time was a good place where I had a close circle of friends.
Well to give some background, my parents I think hated each other. They'd argue about 90% of the time, and I can't remember exactly how often, but a lot of days ended with my dad storming out after a yelling match and the coming back some hours later. He'd normally instigate a lot of these since he was extremely argumentative about everything. Beyond that he seemed to like screwing people's plans over by intentionally being late or making us be late, and also blaming my mom and me a lot for manipulating him or conspiring against him whenever there was a disagreement. My mom would talk to me after and ask me if I should get a divorce a few times, but even though I pleaded for her to do so since like 5 or 6, she never did, "for my sake".
At some point, maybe forever, I developed some issues with disobedience and and anger. I'd throw sort of tantrums that would usually involve me screaming, breaking things, maybe being violent with my parents sometimes though it wasn't a common thing. This probably started around age 6 or earlier, I can't remember.
Well my dad handled these by restraining me when he thought I was going to have a tantrum. I'm not sure how much of a normal response this is, but it didn't seem particularly wrong, regardless I was ashamed of being so disobedient. The point where it got shitty is that his restraining method involved kneeling on my chest, and me being a 6 year old, that made it really tough to breath. If I complained about it he'd say that the fact I could say I wasn't able to breath meant that I could. If I was struggling too much or being loud, he'd usually put his hand over my face as well. With the combined effect of the knees on my chest and the hand over my mouth and most of my nose (and the fact that tantrums usually involved me crying so my nose was very stuffed up), getting any breath at all was very difficult.
He'd keep doing this until I stopped moving or struggling, which would either happen when I contorted my face to get a bit of air in the sides of my mouth or when I'd start to get dizzy and just give up and consign myself to death, but (obviously) I never did die, and it would always come to an end before I even lost consciousness. I tried telling him afterwards a few times about how I hadn't been able to breath, but he'd retort with the usual thing about how I was being manipulative and lying. To top it all off, he really smelled awful. He had a sort of lingering odor about him that was magnified 100x when he was all over me and I was filtering my breath through his hand. I came up with a decent way of describing it: it's like if you smoked a pack of cigarettes, put them in an ashtray, wrung out a sweaty towel over all of them, let it ferment for a few days, and then go into a public restroom and try smelling the ashtray. The smell and his body heat bothered me more than anything.
For whatever reason I still had tantrums. I never told anyone because I hated being that angry and I was ashamed of it, but I don't know why I didn't stop. It's weird, like I didn't want that to happen, but I kept doing the exact same thing knowing full well the results. Every time after I'd go cry about it in my room because even at the time I had no idea why I was doing it. Now I think it may have just been a reaction to my dad, I can't be around him at all without being angry so perhaps because I was younger I'd just lose control.
It's only recently that I remembered this, I mean I kind of did before, but there was a scene in a movie which really brought it back. Before that I could only sort of see it at a distant third person view and didn't really remember how terrifying it was. It explained a lot when I remembered it fully though, like there's the feeling I get when I see my dad (a sort of anger and fear mix) I'd always feel in other situations, like being too warm, or smelling a smell like his, or other reminders. I had a lot of issues about warmth and still do to some extent, like I can't be have too many blankets lest it triggers huge amount of anger, and I can't have too few or I just feel too naked.
Through the whole time I'd also get derealization episodes fairly regularly, which would be the feeling (it's tough to describe unless you've had it, as everyone else says too) of watching everything like it was a movie I wasn't part of and everything being far away, as well as sort of vague voices in my head. Not intelligible or telling me to do anything, but the thing that it reminded me of most was this passage in the fifth Harry Potter book when he's standing by the sort of "veil of death" and he hears what sounds like a large number of vaguely familiar voices talking just below the volume necessary to hear individual words. Since I've heard derealization occurs in grief sometimes, and how much dealing with death is a theme in the books, I've always wondered if J.K. Rowling was basing those voices on the same sort of phenomenon.
This went on until I was maybe 10ish. I don't know why it stopped, it could be that I started to get too big or I fought back. My mom tells this story that I threatened them at knife point, but I've never heard the details and it occurred at around that time, so it could be why. I have no memory at all of that, I don't even know for sure that it happened and that seems weird. I remember clearly at around 11 that we were arguing loudly as usual and I punched her in the face. It's one of my most shameful memories and I still can't believe I actually did that, so the fact that I could threaten her with a weapon only a year prior and not remember it at all seems weird, if it was just because of an argument I feel like the shame would stick out in my mind very clearly. It also confuses me that they were "cowering" upstairs this whole time, and since there are no doors where they were "cowering" it implies I never followed them upstairs at all, and what makes more sense to me is that I might have pulled a knife as my dad advanced. It's all speculation though, I doubt I'll ever know what happened.
To tie this all back to my last post, my behavioral issues eventually got me sent off to that reformish school I mentioned when I was 12. I don't even know what my behavioral issues were, I think they were there, but most I remember is that I skipped school a lot and would barricade myself in rooms and read books all day. I don't think it ever got too bad honestly, my mom says it did, but when I asked further she gave me the knife story, and then only one more thing about me ripping open a bag of lentils and spilling them on the floor, which is annoying and bad behavior no doubt, but if that's the worst thing that I did then I'm not sure that classifies me as the devil child they always said I was.
Once I went away to school a lot of the issues that I had with anger sort of stopped. I think this was in relation to not seeing my dad, and while the whole school was arguably abusive and I wished I was dead about 90% of the time, I was at least out of the influence of him. I definitely think it would have been better to go somewhere where I wasn't surrounded by yelling and overly harsh rules without any support all the time, but it was like out of the fire back in the frying pan.
This is mostly to get it out there and if anyone has any feedback or anything it would be appreciated, but I guess there are two actual questions. One is the title here, why would a child keep being so disobedient knowing that the consequences would be so awful? The other one is kind of related, I mentioned I skipped school to read books a lot, and I was also wondering why I might have done that if it would get me away from him? I tried everything else to avoid him (walking home from school alone, staying in my room, preparing my own meals in the dead of night) but the easiest thing I had was school which I never went to, even when the school at that time was a good place where I had a close circle of friends.
