quote:

How do you deal with an ongoing situation where you are just negated and your existence as a thinking feeling person (well ok child) is denied.

((((((((Lamplighter))))))))
The above quote broke my heart, it was so telling that you were talking about a thinking feeling person and felt like it had to be corrected to make it clear that you were talking about a child. That tells me that on some very deep unconscious level you believe there's a difference, that a child isn't a person. I don't have a lot of time right now, I'm heading out the door to what I think is going to be a session from hell, so I want to post a lot more later but it might be a little while. But just a few quick things that hit were that even though I do have specific events and memories I can go back to, as I've healed I've realized that the damaging part wasn't so much WHAT was done to me, as what you are describing. The not being treated as a person, as mattering, as being loved for who I was, for having a clear reflection so I could learn who I was was what turned out to be the most painful and hurtful part of what happened and having a caring other be able to hear our feelings and understand them.

And that neglect is SO much harder to heal from than active abuse (although the fact that you mention you remember beatings tells me it wasn't all omission) just because it is so hard to recognize that you were actually mistreated.

I have a lot more to say but bottom line, I think you're path to healing is your right brain. Because you don't have concrete events, you're going to have to trust your emotions so to speak. Because I repressed the memories until I was into my 30s I have only fragments and sometimes not even that. I once expressed frustration to my T that I had no memories, only these feelings and he told me that I was having memories OF feelings. I know it can feel confusing to have all these intense feelings and not know what they're tied to, but allowing yourself to feel them, without trying to judge them, just accept that they are your feelings and even if you don't know exactly what caused them, the fact is you're having them and they worth paying attention to, because you're worth paying attention to. It's messy and frustrating having to work that way, it's so much easier to be able to think and reason our way through using nice clean logic. Unfortunately that's not how we heal, we heal by being in the messy, timeless morass of difficult emotions left behind by what happened.

Please believe me that whether or not you can feel the hurt, I can hear so much pain and confusion coming through that I have NO doubt that your mess IS warranted.

AG

Hi Lamplighter,

Thanks for posting this. I've been thinking about opening a thread called 'emotional abuse' but I think this really is so closely tied. I relate to a fair amount of what you're saying here, and although our experiences are different in some ways it really helps to have the chance to think those things through in relation to someone else.

I don't know how to respond; I'm lost with this stuff myself. But I like the way that AG above shifts the emphasis OFF 'warranting' the 'mess' you (we) are and onto caring for you (us), paying attention to you (us), healing. I get caught in this thing of thinking about therapy, my feelings as something that needs accounting for, that needs an excuse. Deep down I'm trying to explain and excuse my behaviour, myself. Believing I'm totally UNexcusable, in trouble, and have to give an account of why. Sounds familiar, huh?

But imagine if a little kid did something in not such a good way, and you could take her hand gently, talk to her about what happened, look in her eyes, see how she was feeling, respond to that, teach her a different way, stay with her while she tried it out, praise her. Imagine if she and how she was about the incident were the most important thing, not whatever the stupid incident was. Imagine if we had got THAT kind of parenting.

I guess from what you say that you didn't; I know I didn't either. Lots of people don't, but maybe that's the kind of care it takes to grow a person who is happy in themselves. Maybe that's what human beings need, at least SOME of the time, and being deprived of it leaves us with this incapacitating pain. I guess what I'm saying is both that you HAVE reasons, great big reasons to feel the way you do, and also that you don't need them - you are worthy and lovable just the way you are, & you always were.

What really upsets me about this at the moment - and excuse me while I get unreasonable & unforgiving - is that it's NOT THAT @*)*#&#(*$& HARD to give this to a child. Lots of children DO receive it. I hate that so many of us didn't.

BUT I believe it is okay for us to seek it out for ourselves, to find it, to learn, and to do all this feeling and stumbling along the way. And I believe that we CAN learn it, even with all the confusion and pain.

Maybe I'll post more about this later, but for now, go easy and take care.

I was going to quote the same quotes as blackbird did but I wasn't fast enough. Lamplighter, I think you did an excellent job of articulating that unexplainable dark abyss. From what you wrote I feel it in my gut and it aches. I am glad that AG, Jones, and BB have shared such thoughtful replies. I don't know exactly why I am posting because I am too emotionally drained to contribute a meaningful reply myself. I think I have a similar struggle. I feel a general anger in relation to my childhood, but no one incident seems enough to justify its depth. And so many details I cannot remember anyway, leaving my childhood more of a feeling than a memory. So then I get angry at myself for being angry in the first place and having what seems like a not good enough explanation for the mess that is holding me back in life. For me, it sort of ties in right now to my Forgiveness thread because I tell myself that my anger is unacceptable and a sign that I am unforgiving, and that I have no right to the pain I feel. I just want to offer (((hugs))) since I don't have wisdom!

AG I nearly cried when I read your reply, it made me ever so briefly see myself through someone else’s sympathetic and caring eyes and let me get a little taste of how it might be to finally feel truly sorry for myself. Thank you.

And you picked up unerringly on a point that I wasn’t really even aware of when I added the comment about its being a child. (I actually added that intending to clarify that yes I now experience myself as having thoughts and feelings, but that I don’t remember having thoughts and feelings as a child.) But you are right, my whole attitude to children and being a child is totally warped, and very very negative (for once I CAN make a connection to the past on that one - I came from a 'children are to be seen and not heard' type of family.)

I do hope you post more about your experience with healing the ‘sins of omission’ as what you say makes so much sense - it’s one thing to more or less know that the absence of love and caring and being heard and listened to and validated is responsible for major damage - quite another to be able to pin it all down so I’d really like to hear how you dealt with the not remembering and the not knowing.

I have actually been trying to push myself to go down the ‘the truth is in the feelings’ road but I have such a set up that I absolutely NEED to know what I’m feeling and why, have to have some idea of cause and effect. Going with feelings in that inchoate unknowing way is not only very terrifying, but actually threatens my whole sense of reality - my only way to deal with the terror of the alien black emotions (of which fear itself is a prime one) becoming my sole reality is to rationalize and try and understand what’s causing them. I do agree with your recommendation though - failing proper memories I think the feelings have to be the guide. (though of course there is always the fly in the ointment of feelings actually not being a very good or accurate guide to objective reality :sigh: )

It’s all so frightening and messy and confusing. But it does help enormously to hear other people’s understanding views on this, so thank you so much.

Jones, thanks so much for your reply.

quote:

Deep down I'm trying to explain and excuse my behaviour, myself. Believing I'm totally UNexcusable, in trouble, and have to give an account of why. Sounds familiar, huh?

Totally familiar! :grin:

Though I think with me it’s not just having to justify to others why I feel/act/think as I do, but that I really need to know the connections inside my mind. I feel so detached and cut off from who I was as a child that it’s almost like all my ability to spontaneously feel, to understand feelings is cut off too.

It’s funny for years I just accepted that the way I was treated was fine, ok, normal. It’s only when I started digging around trying to understand why I was such a mess, and started reading psychology and getting interested in other people’s emotional histories etc that I started to make (intellectual) connections to the past. And kept running smack into this big absence - try as I might I could not remember anything particularly traumatic, just this global sense of not having been there, of not existing.

I’m so so grateful for having found this forum - everything people say on here makes so much sense, and in retrospect so self evident too that I wonder how I’ve gone so many years without seeing these things.

I like your idea of a thread about emotional abuse - it’s something that gets talked about a bit here and there, on internet and in books etc, but there’s not nearly enough info for me to get a proper handle on it. And there’s very little about how emotional abuse affects children. It would be really interesting to get personal takes on it, and to find out how others have dealt with it (or not, as the case may be!)

Do you have any specific ideas about it? Your own story maybe?

Oh Blackbird your reply really touched me, more, it was like reading something I’d written about myself but because it was you, I could really feel FOR you - the anguish, the sense of isolation and alienation - the profound loneliness. (If I was my more usual paranoid self, I’d be freaking out, thinking you had somehow gotten into my mind you described the whole thing so familiarly!)

First yeah like you I find myself almost wishing that there really had been something catastrophic that had happened to explain all the bad feelings - something that would justify to the world why I’m so fucked up. Because I don’t have much memory of most of my past I sometimes even manage to convince myself that abuse did happen and I’m just blanking it out. But I also know that even if stuff happened that I don’t remember, knowing about it won’t change much.

Because I really get what you’re describing when you talk about the existential time warp, that the passage of time means nothing - I was actually talking about that yesterday, how when I look back over my life, I have no sense of continuity, of actually being in the events of my life, no sense of time - what happened 30 years ago could just as easily have happened yesterday, and what happened last week is already lost in meaningless. So if I did remember something ‘big’ it would just be like everything else, unreal, meaningless.

I had to laugh, even though it’s not in the slightest funny, at your description of achieving something grand, that would make people take notice, accord respect and admiration and praise almost adulation? - it made me smile (in pain) because that’s exactly the kind of daydreams (and real thoughts) I’d always had - and strived and strived to achieve something, anything that would give me the attention and recognition and just plain being noticed that I seem always to have craved. But there came a point where I couldn’t fool myself with the fantasy anymore, and like you

quote:

And now, instead, I am scrupulously honest with all I meet, about how pathetic and dishonest and uncaring I really am.

Double snap! It’s like I’ve lost all sense of the possibility of ever being important or admirable or just plain likeable so before I get ‘found out’ yet again I make sure everyone knows as much of the bad about me as possible. And I want to pick up here on something you said later in your reply that has really affected me - it’s the first time I’ve ever come across anyone who has so honestly said something that is SO TRUE for me and that I’m always afraid to expose - being uncaring.

quote:

And all my caring for others or compassion can not come from the heart and never has. It is strictly and entirely, an act of the will. Not that I don't care- I do- intellectually. But I can't *feel* that I care.
I am all brain, no heart, even my "feelings" come from the brain.

This SO exactly describes my situation - especially that it’s a matter of being an act of will. It’s something I’ve learned to do, not something that comes spontaneously from some emotional centre/past experience. And you’ve put into words so clearly something I know is so true for me - even my feelings come from my brain. I really struggle to identify things that I feel, it’s like I have to refer to some concise encyclopedia of defining and labelling feelings before I can go oh yes hm maybe that’s anger, maybe that’s sadness, maybe that’s jealousy or envy or resentment or rage or despair - I simply have no real connection to spontaneous feelings, have no idea what it is that I might be feeling I have to THINK about it before I can work out what it might be. The only feeling I know inside out is fear. And I’m getting better at recognizing anger, sometimes.

And I’m always afraid that when I’m showing caring or compassion or empathy for anyone, that they’ll recognize straight away that it’s fake, that it’s not something I naturally know how to feel. Hey this is pretty risky saying stuff like this on a support forum, but well, the intention to care the desire to support is there, I suppose that’s the best I can do. For what it’s worth I do care very much about animals, so I suppose at least I’m capable of it, that’s got to mean something?

quote:

Yes- I have this huge childish selfishness that makes me want everyone to just think about me, me, me- all the time- I have to try and hide it.

I started jumping up and down when I read this - firstly it is SO me (except that I can barely accept having this ‘selfishness’ without wanting to wipe my self centred self obsessed self out of existence!) but secondly that because YOU wrote it, I can leap in and say hell Blackbird, it’s NOT SELFISHNESS! I want to write out all the things I’ve thought up over the years in an attempt to justify what I see as MY childish selfishness, because for you, I can believe them. And I’ll bet you’ve come up with them all too and it hasn’t made any difference either! Just going to mention one - that I’ve had confirmed by various therapists no less - everyone is the centre of the universe. Everyone experiences themselves as being the centre of the universe - therefore the universe revolves around them! Whatever happened to you to make you efface your own existence, to wipe you out from being the centre of your universe - it was wrong. Life IS all about me, me, me fundamentally. It’s just that everyone does a really good job of not letting on about that. Wish I knew how they manage it though.

quote:

But I can't find the way out of this. Knowing all about it, having it all analyzed and figured out does nothing to relieve it

This is where I’m at too - I need to make a connection between what I feel and WHY, and as I have very little access to spontaneous feelings that usual sense of the why being already apparent in the experiencing of the feeling itself is not there, so I spin out and have to try and intellectually understand what the hell is going on, what is making me feel like this, what’s the reason. So I end up with a handful of words and a clever intellectual analysis of what’s going on, and nothing changes. I’m left feeling such as black and despairing and terrified and cut off from myself as ever.

quote:

I just want someone bigger than I am to care about me, and think I am important, to like me, to want to find out about the little things I do and approve them. (Or would do, if anybody cared.)

I just have to wait for someone "bigger than I am" to come along who can accept and love me as I am, so that I can learn to love and care and grow in turn...I wonder?

Interesting comments these - I used to believe that finding Mr Right would do that for me, then having had lots of run ins with Mr Rejection instead decided that I had to do all those things for myself. And failed spectacularly at it. Which is why I am now back in therapy. And I have to say that reading the posts on this forum have made me realize that actually, it’s good therapy that can provide all the things you are talking about there - all the things I know I so desperately need. Someone who is endlessly giving, reflecting me unconditionally as good, someone safe, reliable and understanding. Someone to whom I could say - I want you to be interested in all these petty unimportant ‘childish’ things I’ve done, I want you to want to know all about me, I want to be able to prattle on to you just like a four year old who’s done a very unoriginal finger painting but who nevertheless wants you to praise it and admire it and say wow what a fantastic work of art. And know that it’s perfectly ok to openly want all that.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I don’t think it’s possible to find that bigger person in the real world, not totally anyway. I know whenever I thought I’d found Mr Right (Mr Daddy? Mrs Mummy? Didn’t matter to me, so long as there was SOMEONE) it didn’t take long before I was being made to feel unimportant, not likeable enough, not good enough, not interesting enough - right down to unlikeable, uninteresting, a worthless waste of space. I needed so much approval and reassurance that even if I got good things, it was never enough, not nearly enough for me to be able to love myself. In fact I’d always end up loathing myself instead because that’s how I experienced rejection.

I’ve read your posts about your current worries about your P - so I expect my saying that actually I think a good therapist is the one who can be that bigger person isn’t filling you with hope and confidence. I’d just say persevere. All that you’ve described in this post makes me wonder whether you’re not dismissing your own reservations about him because you think you’re being ‘selfish’ and ‘childish’? I should really put this in the other thread so will stop there for now.

Blackbird I am so deeply privileged that you have replied so openly and honestly - I relate so closely to everything you’ve written it’s something I’ve looked for all my life, someone else who has a similar set up to me. For the first time I feel just a teensy bit less of a freak than usual. Can’t thank you enough for it. :hug:

P.S So sorry for the War and Peace length of this post.

Mad Hatter

Your hugs are worth every bit as much, in fact more, than wisdom. Thank you!

Having said that it's your own feelings about this are where I’ll get the wisdom - if you feel like saying more about your experiences of this absence of loving and validation I’d really like to hear about them.

I posted on your forgiveness thread actually, because I’ve also gone down that road - thinking that if I could forgive, or at least stop blaming, I would feel a whole lot better and could start seeing the good (what good, was there really good back then lol) in the people whom I now seem to be holding responsible for my mess.

I think right now though, anger is what will save me. Well, I damn well hope so because I’m pretty sure I’ve got a whole universe of rage in me and it would be nice to give it a legitimate target!

I’m sorry you’re feeling so drained right now, I hope you are able to find some comfort and rest to help you with it. I confess, I’d rather feel drained than some of the awful stuff that goes on in me - so maybe you could take this opportunity to give yourself a break from having to deal with all the bad stuff - kind of like making the most of being drained as a pitstop between bouts of emotional confusion.

quote:

Main question for me is how do you deal with the sins of omission (to take a quote from another thread) - when nothing was actually done to you, when you were simply ignored not talked to not asked questions not noticed, effectively invisible (except if you got in the way or did something wrong whatever wrong was, you got hit or yelled at or punished in some way).

Hi Lamplighter... not sure if we've officially met yet, so hi. I wanted to comment on what you said above. You seem to struggle with the idea that nothing was done to you. Well, getting hit, yelled at or punished is something and so is the emotional neglect you suffered. Being ignored, not talked to or having an interest shown in your thoughts, dreams and fears is quite something to have to live with as a child.

My T says of all the abuse, emotional neglect is the hardest for people to recognize and acknowledge. If you read about complex trauma, the experts and researchers will state that emotional abuse is a biggie. So please don't minimize or discount the effect that these issues had on you while growing up. I suffered this type of abuse for years, not even realizing it until I went into therapy for other things. I could recognize the physical abuse part of childhood more easily but when we start to talk about neglect and emotional abuse it is hard for us to acknowledge and easy to find excuses for.

My take on this was that it was all my fault somehow and if I was worthy enough my parents would have paid attention to me. I had a really rough time after my family moved when I was 13 years old. I hated my new school and had no friends and decided to just skip school. I managed to not go to school for almost an entire year and my parents NEVER noticed. How can you not realize your child never has homework, or school activities, or parent-teacher meetings or report cards? Easy, they were too busy with their own stuff to pay attention to my stuff. It was easier to ignore me and I learned to stay quiet and "invisible" so I would not get "in trouble" and get hit.

Not having an involved parent and not having that reflection of who I was or was becoming as I grew up has had a lasting effect on me. I have no idea who I am and trying to figure this out confuses me. I am so used to bending myself into someone who pleases everyone else I never learned what pleases me.

I know this can be elusive and hard to verbalize in therapy. But I would talk about what you have written here. You have memories of the yelling and screaming, the getting hit and the feeling invisible. There does not have to be specific big things but the feelings that all of this evoked in you as a child is big enough to discuss and hopefully process in therapy.

TN

quote:

Originally posted by Lamplighter:
...but I have such a set up that I absolutely NEED to know what I’m feeling and why, have to have some idea of cause and effect...

Oh yeah, I know this feeling. That awful feeling that you're NOT feeling enough...or that you're not feeling "correctly," or that you feel totally wretched but have NO clue why and can't connect it up with anything...that there's no apparent cause-and-effect between how awful you feel and your emotions...and the indescribable frustration that there is no one or two gigantic, glaring things to point to to say, "Yeah, that's the root of my problems right there. I just have to experience the repressed feelings associated with that, purge them from my mind and body like a bad taco and I'll feel great!" Yeah, I have that fantasy, too. But I don't think it works that way.

I know it all very well, Lamplighter, and my best guess is that a large factor in this cloudiness and thick layer of sensory cotton between us and those raw, roiling emotions is defense...or a whole set of defenses. It's a way of being that once worked, but is now obsolete, and your soul is letting you know in a really bad way.

And it may NOT be that you have to perfectly collate all your bad experiences into some kind of precise, mental PowerPoint presentation that perfectly diagrams specific events and ties them to specific, unfelt feelings. Maybe instead it's a matter of slowly coming to see that you created a way of being in order to cope with being treated like a piece of crap that has resulted not only in having trouble feeling, but your actual symptoms (feeling hopeless, fearful, etc.).

And maybe there's something else, namely intense anger. You say that you were beaten and made to feel like you didn't exist. There ain't nothing little about that. That's the stuff of rage, justifiable rage. But, if your current set of defenses are programmed to not feel that, you're not going to feel it...not until you peel away the layers of defense and start to get to it.

Do you ever do any dreamwork in your therapy? You may not feel like there's anything particularly bad about something that was done to you, but trust me, there IS a part of you that does, and that part of you might be speaking to you in your dreams. But, it does take a really skilled therapist to help you parse dream stuff.

And when you don't have anything concrete to talk about in therapy, talk about how shitty that feels. Does therapy feel like a giant waste of time? Feel like you're getting nowhere with it? Say it. Tell your therapist exactly what your thoughts are. Does your T dress like it's 1983? Mine does. Tell him, and tell him how irritating it is to look at him while you're trying to come up with some stupid crap to talk about today. Trust me, this is a great conversation starter.

Seriously, it's not about figuring it all out. If you're like me, getting to the feelings is the hardest work you'll ever do, but I really believe that's where the healing really starts...but being able to SEE your present mental infrastructure in all its aspects and variations and flavors might need to happen first.

quote:

I just can’t experience it as meaningful enough. I don’t think I’m belittling it or denying how bad it really makes me feel, it genuinely doesn’t feel ‘bad’ enough to explain anything.

In my opinion, that's your current mental infrastructure doing its job right there, and doing it perfectly. I know this because I'm the exact same way. You can change this to a more accurate and authentic way of feeling things, but it takes a lot of work. Keep at it.

Russ

Oh Lamplighter,
I did not read the thread yet, but these words touched my heart deeply. I am crying as I read this. This is something done to you to grieve about. My parents were like this- they just did not know how to parent, and there were 5 of us. I am the odd ball becaues I am the only one looking at my shit and trying to sort it out. It is very painful at times.

I too am short on memories of stuff, and even though my thing happened with someone outside the house, the sentiments you posted are the reasons why struggle. My stuff was not addressed. The feelings of being unloved by the ones who you count of for love and protection is the main reasone- I think we are all here. We had no voice, no protection, no love. (or at least no memory of love)

Bring all of this to your T. Maybe start with one of the screaming child memories. I like the idea of EMDR, but right now I am afraid of it.

Don't underestimate your feelings.
And remember- even though we don't really know each other- I feel coose to you by your expression of your wounds. YOu are loved here.

quote:

when you were simply ignored not talked to not asked questions not noticed, effectively invisible (except if you got in the way or did something wrong whatever wrong was, you got hit or yelled at or punished in some way). How do you deal with an ongoing situation where you are just negated and your existence as a thinking feeling person (well ok child) is denied. When you experience yourself as actually not having feelings or thoughts, when you experience yourself as actually not existing - and you have no self awareness because you never got any reflection that you existed as a thinking feeling self aware person.

It’s so hard to pin this stuff down because it’s like a generalized global sort of thing - where you can’t find specific incidents or memories that show this, it’s just a continuous sense of not being there, of not existing as a person in anyone else’s head. I can remember some of the beatings and the being screamed at and ‘getting into trouble’ but it’s almost impossible for me to remember a concrete instance of being negated it’s such an elusive thing. How do you talk about it when you don’t remember even being there, when you don’t recall having a feeling or a thought that let you know you existed and that the other person was negating and denying that existence, your feelings, your thoughts.

Hi Lamplighter,

I will start an Emotional Abuse thread, but I'll link it this thread too, because I think so much of what is going on in this thread is about that. I just think it's also worth having one labelled specifically that for people to find when they are looking through the archives. And I KNOW so many people here have experiences of this and of healing from this that I would like to hear about - and we already are hearing it here and elsewhere.

J

I am amazed at the responses here. I am new here and so I have been trying to read up on the posts. I am in shock that other people can verbalize what I have been thinking my whole life! "Even my feelings come from my brain", invisible, negated, ignored, etc. wow...I didn't really believe that other people felt that way.

This really hit home for me this morning. I have been feeling like I've not wanted to see any more mornings. Not having a specific thing to talk to my therapist about to explain why I feel so bad inside. It's alot of things that really don't matter anymore.

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Blackbird

Thanks again for your honesty and openness. I don’t know if you experience it like I do, but reading your comments where you call yourself bad is like reading my own thoughts. For me being ‘bad’ is the bottom line in everything about me - thinking feeling wanting needing, as far as my internal set up is concerned that all makes me bad. Doesn’t matter what it is I think or feel or want, the simple fact that I think/feel/want makes it ipso facto bad.

Because my immediate response to the two places where you said what made you bad, was to jump in and say but of course not! And give you all the reasonable (and correct!) interpretations of what you are saying so as to ‘prove’ to you that it doesn’t make you bad, nor does it come from a bad you. Only if your set up is anything like mine you’d just go, yeah yeah yeah heard it all before, even thought of it myself all before, but it changes nothing I’m STILL BAD. That’s how my set up works anyway. It sounds to me like you are in a very similar place.

I so hope you can get some help from your P - I find it a bit offputting that he’s said point blank that

quote:

he can't give me that kind of general interest and care about me, not like that

It sounds to me like he’s trying to say he can’t be an all giving all loving all involved parent - which is true on one level I guess, but maybe he could have explained it in a less dismissive way. I think I see what he means about your talking over and over about it, that by being able to openly want that kind of nurturing, and being refused it, you get a chance to feel all the things you feel about not getting it (from rage to frustration to neediness to despair) in a safe place - finally to recognize that you have a right to want it, and to find ways within yourself to get it. I’m working on that one - being able to have a ‘childish’ want and find ways of getting it met even to the point of openly fronting someone and saying for example look at this lettuce I grew isn’t it fantastic and I did it all by myself aren’t I clever? Never mind how laughable that might seem it actually can work. That’s my theory anyway. I’ve given up on the idea that therapy is somehow going to ‘cure’ me off all these childish wants and needs. Maybe sometime down the track they’ll disappear, I don’t know.

Big hugs to you!

Hello True North nice to meet you.

Yeah I agree it is hard to acknowledge absence as a form of emotional abuse, and I suspect it’s not something anyone would be able to work out for themselves - certainly it’s only since I’ve listened to other people, read books, looked at psychology and been in therapy that I started to form a picture of how things should/could have been - like a template against which to measure my own past and be able to say hm yes well that doesn’t look too good in the who has the best parents competition.

Wow it certainly sounds like your lot haven’t fared too well in that competition either. I wanted to ask, if you didn’t mind, whether at the time, when they were completely oblivious of your not going to school, whether you remember how you felt at the time? Did it register or did you just accept it as the status quo, not thinking to question that maybe they ought to have been a damn sight more involved in your life? I ask because I can’t remember how I felt, or even if I actually did feel anything, to me it was all just normal. So I’m interested in whether anyone else has memories of how they felt in response to being negated and made to experience themselves as unimportant, not good enough.

quote:

I have no idea who I am and trying to figure this out confuses me. I am so used to bending myself into someone who pleases everyone else I never learned what pleases me

Now that really sounds familiar! Learning to do say think feel the ‘right’ things the ‘expected’ things in order to please other people (in order to be able to survive) certainly rings bells for me. Trouble is I’m terrified of being the real me - because my experience of being me is that I’m bad. Survival instinct overrides all desire to be authentic - instant red alerts start flashing in my head if I’m in danger of doing something just to please myself (without considering all the implications on other people first). From what you say it sounds as if you are able start thinking about finding out who you really are. And that you are at least able to make genuine connections to neglect in the past that help you understand things now. I hope so!

Thanks for your reply.

Hello Russ I wondered whether you were still around on the forum (have read a lot of your past posts.)

LOL love the way you described the collating of bad experiences into a PowerPoint presentation! That’s exactly how I feel a lot of the time in therapy, that if only I could get it all nice and concise and CLEAR then something would click, something would change.

You put your finger right on it - I’d been expecting therapy to be all about letting out huge suppressed repressed controlled emotions in one continuous purge and then hey presto they’re all gone and everything is fine and peachy keen. Yeah right.

I actually resisted for quite a long time in therapy revisiting the past, saying no no it’s how I feel in the here and now that’s the issue, and finally being unable to do that (because I could never understand WHY I was feeling what I thought I was in the present) I ended up finding myself sitting wet arsed in the puddle of the past all over again. This great mass of blackness which I can’t make sense of can’t even connect to. I have no way of accessing it apart from trying to make initial intellectual connections - I really wish I could take in what everyone has been saying in this thread about emotional absence being damaging - it just always feels as if whatever I’m feeling doesn’t have any direct relation to stuff in the past, no lightbulbs go off no eureka connections. It’s so defeating. Sorry I’m rambling on again here.

quote:

but being able to SEE your present mental infrastructure in all its aspects and variations and flavors might need to happen first.

I think you’re absolutely right here. You’ve just made it clear to me that what I’m in the middle of trying to do in therapy for next session is actually important (I always struggle when it’s me telling T what I think I should be doing in therapy, feeling like I’m not being a good client, going off on tangents and messing him around etc). I’ve halted the direction we were going last session and decided I needed to explain to him as best I could exactly what, as you very clearly just described, was going on in my head that is preventing me getting any benefits from therapy at the moment. The ‘present mental infrastructre’. Yes I like that I hope you don’t mind I’m going to use it when I see my T tomorrow.

Hey 1983 huh? Big hair huge flares and mutton chop sideburns? Oh, no that’s 1973 he he. You are one brave person to confront your T about how he looks, I love it! Hope your therapy is going well.

Hi Helle I am so moved by your tears on reading the posts. It’s the kind of response that actually gets through to me - makes me think that maybe eventually I’ll be able to feel sad about my situation too, one day. Thank you so much for that.

Wanted to ask you the same as I asked True North (actually I want to ask EVERYONE lol) whether you remember actually having feelings at the time about being negated and denied? Or is it only now in later years that you’re able to look back and recognize that you did feel, or even that you didn’t but that NOW it makes you feel bad? Sorry these are pushy questions and I don’t expect answers, only if you feel safe enough to do so. Thanks.

Hello Jones

Thanks for the post - I am interested in what people will say in the emotional abuse thread too. I think it’s a great topic and hopefully lots of people will feel free to talk about this stuff there.

Hello there Smiley

Glad you are finding useful stuff in these threads (I’m quite new too and I am still going over some of the old threads - this forum is amazing and so so helpful in lots of ways.)

Hey I really hope that your feeling of not wanting to see any more mornings is a temporary thing. Wouldn’t that itself be something to talk about in therapy? Not sure of your situation, I just assume you are seeing someone and that they are helping?

Not sure I’d agree either when you say it’s a lot of things that really don’t matter anymore. Well at least I don’t agree in the sense that it sounds like they do matter but that you’re not able to get anywhere with them. Sorry I could be putting my foot through the back of my throat here so don’t take this as anything other than concern. Hope to hear more about how you are doing.

AG

Maybe not the best place to put this, but just wondered how your session from hell went?

Hi Lamplighter - to answer your question I can remember in the beginning having feelings when I was negated. After a while they just kind of faded into the background because no matter what I did, it didn't stop the abuse or the words. I can remember after that piled up for a while, I started to just take myself away from all of it. Just didn't bother me anymore on the outside at least. Inside I kind of swallowed it and stuffed it down. When the feelings started to come up again I had to use drugs and alcohol to keep them buried.

As for me, you're right I am in therapy. I think my therapist is great. It is me and when things get really personal and private I have a hard time speaking. I'm not very good at speaking and I get embarrassed too. So, I try not to talk to anyone about these things even though I know I need to. I'm afraid if I tell my therapist how I feel about my daily living she will be upset, have me locked up, or worse than all - I would have to verbalize some things that I really don't think I can without freaking out. Thanks for your concern. It is kind of strange to have someone who doesn't even know me care.

Smiley

Hi again Smiley

Glad you posted. I think I understand your reluctance to talk to T about some things, as they are more or less bound to act according to their confidentiality agreements. I guess that makes it doubly difficult for you because you have to hide some things that it probably would be more helpful to be able to get out in the open. That’s a dilemma and I only hope you can weather this without it getting in the way of your getting better. I know of some people who have gotten around it (if I’m right in what I’m guessing that is sorry if I’m making arrogant assumptions) - by talking about stuff as if they’re talking about a friend or someone they know or a hypothetical situation, that way they get to check out how much they really can tell their T.

On the other hand if things you think you’ll be forced to bring out into therapy are that frightening I reckon your first priority is to keep yourself safe. I hate fear it’s the one thing that has the power to destroy me so if I’m really freaking out I follow my instinct and shut down, never mind if it gets in the way of therapy or not. Sorry I’m trying to be helpful here and not sure that it’s actually helpful at all. I seem to have stepped onto my lecture the world box I think I should get it off it (I promised that in a previous post and look I’m still on it!)

And hey I can relate to the drugs and alcohol as a means of keeping demons under control. I finally chucked in the alcohol a few years ago and sometimes I think that was a mistake. At least then I used to feel happy sometimes (even if the hangover really wasn’t worth it lol). I hope you are doing ok - the people on here are really supportive and understanding, it’s a great place to feel cared about. Hope you get a lot more care here too.

Ooo Lamplighter I am glad you posted that question. I couldn't find your post AG with your concerns about your up coming session and wanted to ask how it went as was thinking of you too.

Also sorry to interrupt the thread. Where did you post that AG??!!

starfish

Thanks everyone for what you have posted. As I'm reading your accounts I've been thinking "me too, me too" too many times to count. That feeling of existential despair...it reminds me of the "nothing" in the movie The Neverending Story. It also reminds me of the question "If a tree falls in a forest, but no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Likewise, if a child grows up around people who don't see her...how does she know she exists? And is it any wonder that she grows up feeling like something huge is missing, and not knowing what it is?

quote:

Originally posted by Lamplighter:
So I’m interested in whether anyone else has memories of how they felt in response to being negated and made to experience themselves as unimportant, not good enough.

I just jumped at your question Lamplighter because this is exactly what I'm looking for in my therapy, too. But how do I find something that wasn't there?

I remember times where my mom didn't show up when I needed her, or showed up late, didn't provide what I needed, where she raged at me for needing basic things or "forgot" to provide what I needed. I always cried in reaction to her rages, so I must have felt scared. If she wasn't raging, then I think I just felt let down, but it was an expected disappointment, as if it confirmed something I already knew. There was no surprise, as if I had been conditioned to expect this from the beginning. It was a heavy feeling. Resigned?

Also, I've listed the specific instances of negation or rage that stand out in my memory, but they aren't "that bad" , and they don't cover very much total time from my childhood. So what happened in between? My T has asked me, did she cuddle with you, look at you, ask what you were thinking or how you were feeling? No, no, no, never...can't even remember one time.

I told my T, I want to remember what it was like to want that. I don't ever remember hoping for any of that from her. I must have at one time, right? Hmmm.

As I've been writing this, I've also been checking up on the other threads, and something Mad Hatter wrote on the Forgiveness thread hit me really, really hard:

quote:

Originally posted by Mad Hatter (in the Forgiveness thread):
I sometimes get so angry with myself for not escaping the part of me that STILL CARES about being important or loved as a child. I don't want to WANT that, because of the power it has over me.

That is it EXACTLY. I refuse to want it because I absolutely do not want her to have that power over me. Ewwwwww.....I so do NOT want to feel this...oooh, you hit a BIG nerve there, Mad Hatter. I will thank you later but right now it hurts too much. It's closer to the surface now because I'm taking her out for lunch tomorrow and I'm starting to get a little nervous. It will be just me and her...first time in a long time. It's her 60th birthday, seemed like a good time for a little reunion. What was I thinking, why did I do this? Ugh.

For so many years I lived with the big black abyss inside that you've all described so well. I especially dreaded open spaces of time with nothing planned because it paralyzed me. My sister has said she has that problem, too. So much time wasted. And yet there's no way I could have made sense of it in therapy before now because I wouldn't have known what I was looking for. I didn't know what was missing until my daughters got a little older and started needing me to "see" them and I kept coming up empty, and inadvertently negating them...owowow, I just cringe to write that. Makes me want to cry. Because I so much did NOT want to turn out like my mom.

You would not believe how very often my daughters look to see if I am "seeing" them. Their need to be seen is nearly constant. Not in a grandstanding way, but in a "who am I?" way. For example, if they ask me to watch something, they make sure I'm watching the entire time, and if they see me look away for even a second, it's an automatic do-over because I "missed" it. When they laugh at something, they look to me to make eye contact so we can laugh together. And they love to hear the stories of their births over and over again...they are just enthralled by it...and yes I embellish a little, but I'm not that great of a storyteller...so it's something else capturing their attention. Every moment I am with them, my behavior and attitude toward them is telling them "who they are". And if I don't see them...that tells them something, too. And this sheds a lot of light for me on where that feeling of "nothingness" comes from and explains how it can get so big.

I am very grateful for therapy and this board because it really is making me more vigilant, helping me connect the dots and is making a visible, tangible, real change in how I am connecting to my daughters - I can see it in their faces, and my husband even commented on it last week. And that is connecting me back to myself, in an upward spiral kind of way. At some point I suppose this will connect me back to my mom...but that is way too overwhelming to consider yet, too much, way too scary. Just lunch for now.

Thank you so much everyone for sharing your thoughts and experiences...
SG

Hi SG,

quote:

You would not believe how very often my daughters look to see if I am "seeing" them. Their need to be seen is nearly constant. Not in a grandstanding way, but in a "who am I?" way. For example, if they ask me to watch something, they make sure I'm watching the entire time, and if they see me look away for even a second, it's an automatic do-over because I "missed" it. When they laugh at something, they look to me to make eye contact so we can laugh together. And they love to hear the stories of their births over and over again...they are just enthralled by it...and yes I embellish a little, but I'm not that great of a storyteller...so it's something else capturing their attention. Every moment I am with them, my behavior and attitude toward them is telling them "who they are". And if I don't see them...that tells them something, too. And this sheds a lot of light for me on where that feeling of "nothingness" comes from and explains how it can get so big.

This paragraph above is hugely important to me. It set off a million watt lightbulb in my head that had been waiting in the dark for a long time. I had no idea why it feels so *weird* to me when someone is watching me, why I hate it and love it at the same time, why I can't stand having my photo taken, why eye contact feels so important and so hard, etc, etc. Just realising that this is part of what kids do naturally, what they need, feels like such an important part of the puzzle. Thank you.
J

I barely have any time to write anything right now, but I just have to say that I want to quote this ENTIRE thread and title it as my biography... Wow. I can't believe how much I can relate to all of this.

I will post a more lengthy response later, but I just wanted to thank everyone for their posts and for being so open. Being new to the forum, it's so refreshing to find the one place where I can try and understand some of the stuff in my head that just tortures me endlessly.

Hi Strummergirl

quote:

I told my T, I want to remember what it was like to want that. I don't ever remember hoping for any of that from her. I must have at one time, right? Hmmm.

Actually you probably DON’T want to remember that lol. Only joking - bad taste sorry. I know what you mean, I spend a lot of time and emotional energy trying to remember how I might have felt as a child - surely I must have had feelings, must have had some idea of wanting and needing things and not getting them? But I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that actually no, I neither knew what feelings were nor had any idea of the existence of the good things I didn’t get. I think a lot of my ideas about the way things ought to have been have come from adult awareness of how children in happy homes are treated and from learning about child/parent interactions and relationships from generally reading psychology and being in therapy etc.

It took me a long time even as an adult to recognize that I had something called feelings, and even longer to start being able to put names to what I was feeling. And even now I only recognize a handful and even then only sometimes. So I’m not sure it’s actually possible to remember as a child things of which I was totally unaware at the time. Hm bit of a dead end then really. I wonder whether anyone else has that problem?

By the way SG, how did lunch with your mother go?


Hey Kashley, hope you get to post soon, look forward to reading about your experiences.

Hi Lamplighter - lunch went just fine, thanks for asking. We stuck to all the safe subjects. I had lots of mixed feelings and different thoughts through it all. Not the least of which, that it is really weird to sit across from the person that I've been spending so much time and energy trying to connect to in my past and know that I'll probably never be able to speak to her about it. At least not without my amygdala melting down.

SG

Hey Lamplighter,

In response to your question about remembering feeling negated or denied...I remembered something (actually 2 things) last night that I don't know if I've ever recalled before.

The first memory is one from when I was in pre-school. This is my earliest memory, and it's really only a fuzzy picture. I remember being out on some lawn in front of the school with all of my classmates, and this big Easter bunny came out, and being pre-schoolers, we were all fascinated. The bunny then walked up to me and kneeled down, and I remember recognizing my dad's hands before he took off the mask. I was so delighted. I remember feeling so special and wanted. I was touched that my dad would be so thoughtful to do something like that for me. As I was having that memory, I realized...shouldn't I have just been happy? I was so shocked that my dad had done that, and I felt a pang of sadness when I realized that, even at this young age, something that called for thoughtfulness was already such a foreign thing to me. Since then, I have learned that he is a classic narcissist, so even that feeling of being special and thought of is negated, because I know that he did not necessarily do it for me. He did it for him.

My second memory is from when I was in elementary school, and I remember that we used to have these "parent lunches" where our parents would come and have lunch with us. I remember asking my parents on several occasions if they would come visit me at lunch, and as far as I can recall, they came twice. Well, my mother came a few times, and then my father came once. Although, true to his character, he had to be the star of the show, so while I cowered in my seat in utter embarrassment, my father started a food fight. I begged him to stop, to not do it, but he was too blinded by his narcissistic need to be admired to listen at all to me. And, of course, everyone else became a huge fan of his after that. I had wanted him to come to see me and spend time with me, and the only time I spent with him was in a physical sense, but not an emotional one. Although I am now learning that I've never been connected to him emotionally, and he's never tried to connect with me, either.

My mother was a stay-at-home mom, but I remember that when I asked her if she could come visit me at lunch sometime, she regarded it as such an inconvenience. And, of course, I would then feel guilty for asking, guilty that she ever inconvenienced herself and came, and stupid for expecting such a thing of my mom when she indicated that she really "couldn't" do it. I rarely ever asked my parents to come again (especially my dad!), but I do recall looking over at the booths where parents would sit with their kids and longing for the same thing. Last night, I chewed over that memory a little bit, and I keep thinking that that may have been a turning point for me...it seems like that was one of the last times I really tried to connect with my parents. Any and all of my attempts seemed like they were burdens, so I just stayed quiet and flew solo. I remember still always holding on to this wish that someday my parents, or my mom at least, would surprise me and come have lunch with me, like other kids' parents did, without me asking, but it never happened. I asked her a couple more times, but the guilt I would feel for asking and having her come covered up any happiness I would feel when she was actually there. It sounds like such a minor thing, but that's probably one of the only memories I have where I can actually recall the hurt I felt. It's amazing that such a small thing could have such power over me as being the only memory that causes me to feel as I experience it.

A super-frustrating thing I've been experiencing since entering therapy is that I feel like I have barely any childhood memories. I have pictures. Like, I have this one scene of a memory here or there, but there are HUGE chunks that I can't remember. When I try to think of how I felt in my childhood, the only thing I feel is like a blank feeling. I think back, and it seems like, even as a child, I was going through the motions. Going through the motions of childhood. 5 years ago when my first depression hit, it was about a year and a half before I got on medication (my depression is largely chemical, but it was triggered by my parent's divorce). The only thing I can remember is that I was a sophomore in high school. Other than that, it seems like that whole time is just gone. Like a black spot in my memory.

I'm sure there were many other instances where I felt invisible to my parents, though, at the time, the events were miniscule. I am too tired to go back through and search for it (sorry!), but I recall someone mentioning something about how all of these smaller things built up over time. This is one of the only explanations I have for why I am dealing with being so out of touch with my emotions, with myself, as well as other issues, like self-esteem and confidence. Even though there were occasions of larger, more hurtful things, it seems like they aren't what had the biggest impact. Yet, even though I can acknowledge all of this, I still feel as if those little things shouldn't have caused me to be so insecure and out of touch with myself. I'm only scratching the surface at uncovering exactly how my childhood effected me, but there's this picture of a perfect childhood in my head where I got everything I wanted and needed, and I should have no reason to be the way I am now. But, whenever I ask myself exactly *why* I think I had a perfect childhood, I think of many, many instances when my parents both told me that they did everything for me, that I always got what I wanted, that I was lucky to have such loving parents. No matter how hard I try, I just can't muster up any thoughts or feelings that parallel what they told me.

Kashley and all - I know what you mean when you say that looking back you just see blank feelings. Recently someone sent me a couple of pictures of me when I was in a play in the 4th or 5th grade. When I first got it I thought, funny that's me....? Then I started thinking about how old I was and what was happening to me at that time. I kept looking at me, looking for some kind of recognition, something that I could FEEL about me at that time. There was nothing but a cute picture of me when I was in the 4th or 5th grade.

Wow, I thought I had related to a lot of other threads on the forums here, but this one is resonating with me like crazy! This is the stuff I have been totally unable to actually verbalize to my T when I've been in session with her and trying to explain my past. I feel like I don't have any big traumas at all, well, nothing huge worth really being really screwed up over. But as I read all of you people's posts I'm just overwhelmed by the fact that I'm again not alone in what I have experienced and it's so comforting. Well, not comforting because there's not really anything to pin down here, but at least I can see that I'm not just making it up or just imagining that there's got to be something there somewhere to explain what's really wrong with me. Now I know there HAS to be something, it just might take some time and patience to actually find it.

quote:

So I’m interested in whether anyone else has memories of how they felt in response to being negated and made to experience themselves as unimportant, not good enough.

My T asked me last week what happened when my stepdad was finished yelling at me - would he go back to normal or what?

It threw me because I thought she understood, there was no normal; that was it. When he'd finished yelling, he would recite (or yell) a list of the next stuff I had to do and tell me to get out of his sight or to get out of his way or just go away.

then the next contact would be the next set of orders or episode of yelling.

As far as I remember it was mostly like that for years. Being negated is a genuinely negative experience - as in, it's a nothingness. It's like a picture that's all background and no foreground. There's nothing to tell you what it's like because until you experience something different it's just the air that you breathe, or water to the fish.

I want to keep saying that I believe that being negated doesn't have to come from being yelled at or hit or anything tangible or memorable. When I'm angry at my husband I stop looking at him, and he does the same to me. It's enormously powerful - for the recipient it feels BAD. A parent could do that to a child and they would feel it. But they couldn't necessarily know where their bad feeling came from.

My point is not to say that if you feel bad your parents must have negated you, or that parents must keep eye contact with their children at all times or they are abusive, etc. I just think it's important to consider the basic emotional tone of family relationships when you're trying to make sense of your life. Because that tone can determine so much of how you feel both at the time and later (ESPECIALLY if you don't understand it - which is more likely when it's subtle).

quote:

Now I know there HAS to be something, it just might take some time and patience to actually find it.

I think, for me, I also find that reading all of this doesn't necessarily comfort me, but it tides me over for a while so that I can try and stay patient while I try to understand things better.

quote:

Being negated is a genuinely negative experience - as in, it's a nothingness. It's like a picture that's all background and no foreground. There's nothing to tell you what it's like because until you experience something different it's just the air that you breathe, or water to the fish.

I completely identify with this. I'm really only starting to see the "different" in these past few months. A couple weeks ago, I visited my father, and he went into a totally random rage about something and told me to shut up, and not even 2 minutes later, he was joking, and I was laughing with him. But, this time, I felt hurt beneath my smile, not necessarily because of what he said to me, but because I realized just how blind he is to his behavior, which was substantiated by his ease in lightening the atmosphere. This whole interaction only lasted about 5 minutes, but I recognized just what was wrong with the situation, and I recognized that things had been like that for a LONG time, but I've just never seen it for what it is.