NPR had a neat story on PTSD this morning. So far, I haven’t found a link to this story, but I will keep looking. 😉
Apparently, folks who were studying PTSD found that people who develop full-blown PTSD or chronic PTSD have something in common – lack of support from their communities. People who have been through trauma who have community support are far less likely to develop full-blown or chronic PTSD. For example, active duty soldier coming home from Iraq are less likely to develop PTSD if they live in supportive communities who understand what they’ve been through… if they have a support community that “gets it.” However, reservists coming back from Iraq go back home to families that may not be educated or prepared for what their soldier has been through and those reservists are most likely to develop full-blown PTSD.
I am not a soldier. I am a survivor of child-abuse and I have PTSD. Over the years, I have been annoyed by hearing over and over from the experts that they didn’t know what one person got PTSD when another person didn’t. When I went to 12-step meetings, I was encouraged to blame my own faulty being for having developed full-blow and chronic PTSD. I was encouraged to think that I just must’ve been broken in some ways to have developed full-blown PTSD when some people go through even worse traumas and don’t end up as traumatized as I was.
When I look back at my whole childhood, I was extremely isolated and when I did try to reach out for help no one believed me. My parents were very good at putting on a charming exterior and not until my adult years did I actually meet people who could believe that my parents were capable of abuse. I had no support. I certainly had no supportive community or anything like that. People tended to go right back to my parents to tell them the “crazy lies” that their daughter had been telling about them. Then I’d get punished by my parents for “lying.” I wasn’t lying. Sometimes I had a hard time even believing myself because no one else believed me. How could I ever heal a wound that I wasn’t even sure existed or if I just made it up like 100% of the people in my life claimed I was (at the time)?
My mother always liked to say how I was just over-sensitive and somehow just wrong and paranoid and broken for reacting to abuse (even sexual abuse) the way that I did. Sure. Kids love being brain-washed, humiliated, beaten, terrorized, manipulated and sexual abused. *headdesk*
First off, my reactions were crazy. The situation that I was raised in was crazy.
Second, I realize that I had zero support. It felt more like negative support… like anyone in my life was invested in believing that I was just lying for attention or because I was “mean” or “crazy” or something.
Looking back, I realize that most of those people prolly meant well. I have a strong sense that many people refused to believe me, because they didn’t want to believe that kind of abuse existed in the world or that my “charming” parents could perpetrate it. If my parents (who went out of their ways to make sure everyone loved them), were abusive, then ANYONE could be. Sigh. My parents created a protected situation so that they could get what they wanted (abuse of me) without anyone figuring it out (by making a point of being ultra charming around friends and family) unless they were very clever or knew about abuse and such. They did a good job of creating a situation where no one would believe me. Isolation. It hurt. Maybe even more than the rest of the abuse did, cuz I craved support so deeply… and yet got the opposite when I tried to get support from friends or family…
Agh. Sad feelings. Maybe washing some dishes will help me get present and come back from feeling deeply heart-broken from all that has happened.
–AngryGrayRainbows
Angry Gray Rainbows 
Abusers are very adept at avoiding detection and blaming the vicitm. I think they even believe their own lives at some point.
I have witnessed a few abusive situations as an adult and it is very obvious to me what is happening but not so much to everyone else.
I do help you feel better.
I had a similar situation. My mother seemed intelligent and charming. Yes, when I tried to get help, my mother made it seem as if I was telling tales, then she turned around and started lying about me — telling people I was sexually active at 12 yo (not true) that I smoked and took drugs (also not true) that I stole money from her purse and credit cards (also not true) Mom once burned me with a cigarette. When I showed it to a teacher to ask for help, the teacher accused me of doing it to myself, and then when I insisted my mother had done it, she lecture dme about how things weren’t going to improve for me until I “faced up to the truth.” I never asked an adult for help ever again.
To get past all of it, I had to completely break off any contact with my mother. I still feel bad that it had to go that way, but since she doesn’t respect anyone’s boundaries, she isn’t safe. Even her brothers are STILL scared of her, even today.
No one has the right to judge how “bad” your abuse was. It was bad enough. Mine was bad enough. Bad enough to cause lasting harm? No one has the right to judge you for that. That’s stupid “Blame the victim” shit, and neither you nor I deserve that. We’re been through enough already.
Sending hugs. I’m sorry we had to go through that.
i know online support is not actual real-life support, but i’d like to venture out of lurkdom to offer good vibes and psychic hugs.
what you endured was cruel and harmful. but you are not isolated any more. i hope writing brings you a measure of peace as well as awareness to your readers. maybe others will make more of an effort to ‘get it’ now that they have been told that their support and understanding does make a tangible difference.
i thankfully never experienced that degree of abuse; however there were parts of how my family treated me that i believe today may have been abusive (and certainly neglectful).
I am trying to forgive them in my head. they don’t think they need to ask for forgiveness because i was an ‘over-sensitive’ child who was also ‘difficult’ ‘manipulative’ (said whenever i cried or got angry in response to something they said/did that hurt me). for many years i have tamped down on reactions because of that.
but in college i met a friend who didn’t know my family who could listen without judging and offer support. just hearing ‘yes, what they did was hurtful, and therefore you were hurt. you’re not broken or wrong for reacting the way you did. you’re not crazy. it really happened’ was so incredibly helpful and possibly neccessary for my healing.
i hope today there are people in your life who can give you the affirmation you need, and wish you the best.
(((((((((((((((((((AGR))))))))))))))))) I empathize so much with what you have written, since so much of your childhood mirrors my own. I have three brothers, now in their 70’s, who believe that my sister & I have exaggerated how bad our family was, what a monster our father was. One brother in particular ignores the sexual abuse & of the constant physical beatings said, “Well, father was tough on us, but we deserved it; we were bad kids”, a belief inculcated into him by our father’s incessant verbal abuse, his constant insistence that we were bad & evil & needed to have the bad beaten out of it. He was raping little girls, verbally & physically abusing children, long before he started drinking, but because he became an alcoholic & I, as the youngest child, at home long after the others were out on their own, survived the worst years, with unremitting abuse, death threats, the possibility that he might at best drop a lighted cigarette & burn us all to death, my brother’s response to my hatred of Father was, “Well, you didn’t know him when he was a good man”, meaning when the other kids were small, before he drank. Somehow, beating, raping, verbally abusing small children, holding my mother in bed to prevent her from caring for a crying infant, & various other things which happened BEFORE the alcohol, do not mesh with my image of ‘a good man.’
Yesterday someone with whom I share living space who is a tv addict & will watch constantly while in the house & not in bed was watching some show for a few minutes where Mackenzie Phillips was promoting her new book about her father & her childhood. I had to leave the room & go outside & walk around for a few minutes because this woman, whose father raped her & shot her full of heroin, spent the interview making excuses for the sick, depraved bastard, trying to assure everyone that he wasn’t really THAT bad, that he was REALLY abusing himself more than he was her, yadda, yadda. This woman is living as deeply in denial of what a warped, insane, abusive monster HER father was as my older brothers, the oldest in particular, are in denial about OUR father.
So, yes, about the PTSD…been there, done that, still have days when I try to find my way out. About wishing I had had some support, some protection, someone who believed me, understood, validated my experience….I wished that so often, mostly in my younger years wishing for some strong, brave, caring, gentle, good knight in shining armor to rescue me. Unfortunately, the man I married to escape my parents had many issues of his own & was often abusive in various ways, though not as severely so as my parents, so I had to learn to rescue myself.
To all of us who have survived, I send love & hugs, support & encouragement, & the wish that we can rescue ourselves, heal, find some supportive communities as well, & make the future brighter for ourselves & for those who come after us as well.
Thank you so much! The validaton and support has been very helpful. It is all too easy to forget that I am not alone anymore… that there are other people who understand these things and/or have been through these things. Knowing that I’m not alone is some sort of comfort.
I’m feeling so much better since I wrote this. For me, writing it all out goes a long way to healing.
This bit from Patsy could be a chapter in my own biography: “Unfortunately, the man I married to escape my parents had many issues of his own & was often abusive in various ways, though not as severely so as my parents, so I had to learn to rescue myself.” I’m sorry you went through that too.
I don’t have PTSD, but I can relate to a lot that was said here. My first memory of my mother, is when I was maybe….6 yrs old. She had picked me up, held me out in front of her, and yelled and screamed at me. Then, she threw me – hard- to the ground (flat on my back). It’s a wonder I didn’t end up with brain damage.
And that’s only the first memory. By junior high, I was making excuses for her – “”I never listen anyway” or “I deserve it, I did something bad.” Honestly, regardless of the bad thing I did, NO CHILD should get hit with a fly swatter until it leaves welts. No child deserves to get hit on the face for mouthing off, or get smacked in the back of the head for not leaning their head over their plate during dinnertime.
No child should be lectured at for an hour. It was those long lectures, that led me, a sophomore in high school, to say to my mom “Could you just hit me already?” A lecture lasted an hour or more. A “spanking” could last at most 10 minutes, and then I was sent to my room. The last time my mom hit me, I was 17. I left for USMC boot camp soon after.
The bright side of things was that I learned a lot from that time. I learned that you cannot beat someone into seeing things the way you do. I learned that you might be able to break my heart, but it takes much more to break my spirit. I learned that anger might feel good – righteous, even – but there is a time and a place for it. And “discipline” is no substitute for love.
Of course, I had to learn to love myself again. I had to learn that I was not inherently bad- just misunderstood. I also learned not to make excuses for the abuser – what they did was WRONG, plain and simple.
I hope you are feeling better, AGR. You deserve to be happy. 🙂