Sounds like you were being a normal kid. Personally I think dragging a kid of any age, for any reason, by the hair is abusive.

As for using my trauma background as a justification, well...I've certainly felt that I was exaggerating things. But as long as you want to change your behavior, then linking it to things that happened in the past is just a way of understanding better, not justifying. TO justify something would mean you were trying to prove it was OK to continue with it, don't you think?

Liese, I'm sorry you had that experience. It's common for those with trauma backgrounds to minimize it or try to justify it away... as in I deserved that treatment because I was "bad". No child deserves abuse of any kind. Ever. In some cases we worry that we are making "too much" out of the abuse because we then have to face the fact that we were abused and also that our parents had very serious problems and disorders that they needed to use their children as punching bags. It's what makes recovery so difficult because our backgrounds were so damn confusing and unpredictable. You were going on vacation, it was supposed to be a happy time and instead you endured that expeience. Sort of ruins the "happy family" memories.

Your mother subjected you to both physical abuse and emotional abuse. She humiliated you in front of other people and this kind of thing instills terrible shame in those of us who experience this kind of treatment by parents when we are children. I think your mother got scared because she didn't know where you were for a moment and SHE should have been supervising your play. Instead of admitted she was in the wrong, she could not regulate her own emotional state and she took it out on you... a young child who was powerless.

Your story resonates deeply with me. I was also dragged around by my hair too many times to count. In front of strangers and in front of relatives and friends. My mother didn't care.

I definitely think you should talk about this with T. It could open a good conversation that will lead to some healing for you. It will also help him to understand you better, knowing that you endured as a child.

Sending hugs
TN

I often convince myself I make more out my trauma than it was. My T says it's my defense of minimizing. I still find myself doing that when she brings things up. For example, last session she was talking about a flashback I had as being a classic PTSD symptom. I immediately countered by saying I didn't have PTSD because I've never had one serious life changing trauma. She gave me an empathetic grin (she knows a lot about the many traumas I had) and calmly explained that complex PTSD is harder to treat and overcome than just one event. I've had a lifetime of many traumas. I told her I don't want to fall into a role of victimhood and use my past as explanations for my maladaptive adult behavior. So - that really didn't answer your question exactly - but I guess what I'm trying to say is that for me, anyway, when I claim the trauma, I do feel like I'm taking on something that was either not really that bad or finding excuses for my life now. It's not true. A lot of crappy stuff happened, but I still don't have connected emotions to it.

I think your experience of the train should definitely be talked about with T. Mine always says it's not about what exactly happened or what or how much you remember, but about the emotions brought up. Recently I started talking to T about a vague memory if being 7 and my fathers employee staying with my brother and I for a weekend. As I talked and she asked questions, a lot more came up than I ever imagined. It was really good to find all that muck buried inside and share it. Your experience might nit be anything more than what you remember, but there could be buried emotions inside you need to process.

I don't feel like I make more of my past I minimize a lot and think I came out of my past strong for what it was. Sorry if that is triggering both my Ts have worked hard to push me out of denial to get to a point I can say that.

As far as hair pulling I think you should tell your T. I certainly would not be okay seeing that and of course it could be traumatic without a support system, etc. Sometimes even words can be traumatizing or upsetting I've had memories of someone calling me a name or saying something mean that I internalize forever, etc. I've been dragged on some occasions by the hair and I tell my Ts when it is pertinent information to a memory. Everything is fair game in therapy.

Liese, I really felt for 7 year old you and I totally agree with what TN has said.
What a painful thing to have happened to you. As kids we just have to push it down and keep going, but it was pretty awful. think about how you would feel if you saw a 24 yr old woman being pulled by the hair through a train by a man. You would feel sick with horror and want to intervene. I bet the family who you were made to sit with were wishing they could intervene too and make you feel a bit better after having been treated so badly.
It would be nice if you could tell your T. Maybe you have never allowed yourself to have a good cry about it and therapy sessions are a good place to feel those feelings that we just don't feel able to feel elsewhere.

As to trauma and whether I make more out of my trauma background, I am in the strange situation of having denied it mostly for fifty years and then now, having to face how bad it actually was. I feel really wobbly around this. In fact what I frequently STILL do is go back into denial (my T puts on a really patient face when I do that yet again) and then I eventually cannot sit with the exploding feelings that build up when I have denied it all again. I sometimes just try to make it sound much less too. So I have been trying this last year to actually face it full on and SAY how bad it was, and is. That is the hardest thing. I find that I stil have a little young part of me that says what my parents said "stop kicking up a fuss! Oh we have all had difficulties- you are no exception, just get on with life like we do! Stop being such a drama queen!" you know - all the usual stuff that not very good parents tell their kids when their kids are hurting badly and the parents don't want to know or want to deny it and push it away.
also I have found that everybody has some vulnerabilities and my traumas also elicited some strange reactions from people:
1. Wow, what am *I* complaining about - YOURS are so much worse. (easy one to fall into, esp if you have a tendency to minimize)
2.What are you complaining about! I have had bad times TOO, so shut up with your drama. (the 'you are minimizing my trauma by telling about your trauma' tangle that people get into. Not great to be on the receiving end of, I tell you.)

so I am usually very very careful who I share it with. Peoples buttons get triggered.

(((BLT)))(((TN))))((((RAVEN)))(((CAT)))(((SADLY))))

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me. My T is a great guy. I don't know what he went through but I do know it was something. My guess is the way he coped with it was to move on, fix it where he could and not dwell on the past.

The way he has dealt with his own stuff no doubt has a bearing on his treatment ideas and models and what he is attracted to and the way he practices.

And, here he was presented with someone who had her pain invalidated for her her whole life and my feeling is that he wanted to move on from it all, he wanted to try to get me to move on from it all. He was trying to put the cart before the horse, so to speak. He has this "it's all about change" mindset. Well, yes, it is, but you can't push someone to change when they aren't ready or they haven't done something they need to do.

I needed to have my pain validated as it was not accepted or validated as a child and has caused me to get into abusive situations. It IS a part of who I am and a part of my identity. Sure, I'd love it if it wasn't but that's not the case. I have to accept my history for what it is. I think he was trying to help me become more assertive but there was something more basic and developmental that I needed to do. If you are not connected to your pain, how can you be assertive?

He gets that now. But there's a part of me that is still afraid to talk to him about it all. He's getting better at validating my pain and even told me in my last session that the more he learns about my childhood, the more he realizes how much I need it. That I need him to validate it and then I will be able to validate it on my own.

Unfortunately, it just goes back to me so wanting him to love me and wanting to please him. Wanting to be the good patient and do therapy "his" way instead of being able to say, "this is what I need." I gotta give that up.

Thanks for the support and encouragement and for helping me to think this through.



Liese

Nope, your not making a big thing out of it Liese *hugs*. That's trauma. The hair pulling thing happened to me too. I used to be dragged up the stairs by my hair by my father when he got really angry. My stepmother did it a few times too.

Tbh, we downplay all of this stuff over time and normalize it. As a child, what else can you do? And then you keep it normalized for so long and find ways to alternate your attention to other things then when your older and finally address it you think 'this wasn't so bad'.

my best friends dad used to shut her outside like a dog if she didn't follow instruction for her schoolwork. now to me that is shocking. I was shocked when I heard that. Its degrading, and disgusting. But she couldn't react to it in the same state of anger that I was for her.

Its a common occurance I think and I've been in therapy and detailed my abuse with seeming ease, totally disconnected to it. It's only recently I might be finding some anger but I'm not sure if its real and therefore I periodically feel quite guilty over it.

I would say that as long as your honest with things that went on, then the feelings, emotions, will come out in due course when you get back in touch with the reality of what went on. Sounds like your still in a state of disbelief/normalization/PTSD I guess maybe?

*hugs* xx

Liese, I often feel as if I make much more of my past in order to justfy my present failures. It worries me simply because it feels good to realize that certain things were abuse/neglect. Why would it feel good? That seems wrong to me, I should be sad about it, not relieved, right? But maybe we it feels validating to realize it was abuse, because you are so used to beating yourself internally on a deep level for not being perfect, that recognizing that you were abused in this scenario is a relief simply because it is recognized as something that affected you on a deep level, and thus you really aren't as responsible, perhaps, so some of the pressure of that shame comes off, to realize that it was really the behavior of others that was shameful at that time, and led you down the wrong road in terms of being able to love and care for yourself? Maybe that's why. My old SD used to try to get me to see how bad I feel inside about myself unconsciously, in order to paradoxically, help me feel better- sounds weird, but it had a profound affect on me in terms of being able to develop a little bit of self-compassion.

Incidentally- there is something about being dragged by the hair as a child that triggers a very deep sense of utter worthlessness and inhumanity- in particular in front of other people. It's a brutal and cruel way to treat a child. Hugs to you, Liese- no child should have to endure treatment like that- ever. If your mother had taken you aside, and gently told you that the behavior was disturbing other passengers, and made you come back and color quietly at your seat for awhile beside her- it would have had a far better effect, than shaming you so deeply and hurting you over a simple misdemeanor, the kind of thing every little kid does at some points. I'm so sorry you had to endure that.

hugs,

BB

((((KANSAS))))(((FMN)))((((BLACKBIRD))))

Want to thank you all for the validation. Just to clarify something here, my mother didn't know we were blowing bubbles in peoples faces. Anc actually, I don't think I really did it because I was uncomfortable with it. My mother was upset because she couldn't find me and the train had stopped and she thought I got off.

In her mind, I hadn't done anything wrong. She told me to go off and make a friend and play and I was doing that.

The reason why I felt like I was tyring to make more out of it is because I don't really feel an emotional connection to the incident. Being pulled by the hair through the train is just this image in my mind, almost like it happened to someone else. It seems a bit unreal. Although I do remember how absolutely mortified I was to have to eat with that family. I didn't make eye contact with them at all. That was horrible. I probably didn't eat. That's one of those times when you wish you could climb out of your skin and just be anywhere else or anyone else.

I did tell T although I prefaced it with, I don't know why I'm telling you this, I don't know if I want your empathy, it doesn't bother me, I hadn't thought of it until recently when I was looking at my life and trying to see if I had any happy times at all with my family.

T focused his empathy on the punitive nature of being made to eat dinner with that family. I think more than anything, that's what I remember about my childhood, this sense of you're bad and now your going to pay. Does that make sense? Like, you're doing what I told you but I got scared because I thought you got off the train and now I'm going to make you pay for it. I think that was her overall parenting style. Ugggghhhhh. It's all so complicated.

Again, thanks for all the support and validation.


Liese

quote:

I think that was her overall parenting style

Scary stuff, and no doubt would have an negative impact on any child/adult. The memories are there now without the feelings attached,because they have been repressed.

Intolerable feelings towards parents can be very threatening to a child. Safer to hide and deny them, until there is an overload of pain/shame/anger/hurt. We might wonder then where all these anxious feelings come from when we are older?

An overload of pain from the past can cause a lot of unexplained fear, and confusion in our present.

Yes, one does need to revisit the past to unload pain, only then will there be less fear of it. And we shouldnt need our therapist's permission to feel that pain.

We do need that "silent witness" to validate our pain, so we can FEEL what has been hidden, over and over, until the overload is diminished enough for us to at least...cope.

If the train incident could be repeated in your mind now, what would you want to say to your mother, and everyone else who did nothing to protect you? Was there any respect? Was there any dignity? No explanation can justify that type of behaviour towards anyone, let alone a child.

It should at least sadden you, as it does me.


One wonders what else happened with this type of parenting.


Likes:


"Babies are born not knowing how to love. Those of us who know how, have the responsibility to teach them."