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Still need to work through early trauma

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Gaining Strength:
Hops, thanks for sharing. It is so helpful to hear your story. Though I find it very painful to read, I feel such compassion for you and the child we all once were. How similar so many threads of our stories are.  My mother would call or at times ring a bell for me to do something for her as though I were her servant. She would expend more effort to call me than it would have taken for her to do it for herself.

Would your mother intentionally sabotage your works of creativity?

My mother certainly did and her self-loathing directed on me  continues to leave me bound ( but not for long.)

Thinking of you - GS

Ales2:
Wow Hops and GS I can relate to both of your observations.

GS the passive need for attention and all of that dynamic is prevalent with my NMom also.

Mine completely thwarted any creative attempts and also being my own boss/business even with 20 years of experience in the field. My Dad was an MD and invented a medical device, she thwarted that also, she thought it was a pipe dream, my brother was a graphic designer, started his own design firm with clients from a company he was laid -off, she thwarted that also indirectly through disapproval and when he encountered difficulties or cash flow blips, she pushed him back to working for someone else. Seems even highly credentialed and experienced, she had to control the choices. I see it now, but it took 20 years. I WILL start my own business and succeed with it... 

Bitch, witch,  she has the "itch" we long to be rid of......ugh.... :x

Hopalong:
I don't know that she thwarted me, exactly...I went on to publish a book and poems...
BUT--I vividly remember how she proclaimed SHE was a writer, and urged me to read
pages and pages of her tone-deaf, uninsightful reminiscences and homilies.

It was excruciating because I really did have a deeper gift for deeper writing,
and it was clear that she was (unconsciously, I believe) -- competing.

I think it did have the effect of me having a lifetime struggle to take my own
work as seriously as in fact, I probably should.

Interestingly, my Nboss has done a similar thing. I have to edit his work massively,
he's tone-deaf and unreflective in his writing, and I make him sound smarter and
more insightful. But in a public setting, he talks about how "we" are writers, as
though our talents are equivalent.

That what you mean?

Hops

Izzy_*now*:
hiya GS and others,

This thread on childhood trauma is just something else. I can relate to many things posted but not all.

I see a partially disabled mother who was not available emotionally and a father who was a rage-aholic and beat his animals and 5 children.

From those 5 children, 4 were red-heads, I was in the middle and with brown hair. I was never popular with anyone. I was taunted, pointed at, laughed at (except for my mother who did nothing to stop it) At school, when I was 5 and Gr. 1, the girls chose their friends. Two were left over: Florence, age 14, in grade 8 and dating her uncle., and ME. I was really an ugly kid and was left out! Florence was even uglier than I. I must have thought that  appearance was the most important away back then.

When we moved to another farm, I was 8. I was put in the large bedroom with the 3 sisters. I wet the bed and they kicked me out, while Mom took me into her bed, as I never saw her share a room with Dad. He and my brother shared, while a downstairs bedroom fully furnished with a bed and 3 matching dressers, went unused. I just found out now that the tumour I had removed at 20 was a cause of incontinence, and I felt so ‘ignored’ about parents helping me with an issue.

When I was 10, I was changing clothes, with my door shut, but it gaped at the top. I heard giggles outside and shortly after that I was being called ‘Baldy’.  I was called that by all 4 siblings and finally figured out that, at 10, I ought to have had pubic hair. I never went to Mom about it. I can see now that the two younger ones were pressed into this without even knowing why and the 2 older was led by the 2nd eldest, the bully of the family.

From then on I have hated my body, and look at me now, 65 years later, disabled, deformed, my left leg shorter than the other, wheelchairs, crutches, flags, ‘Depends”, while the other 4 are still healthy (as can be in our 70s..)

It has all boiled down to my brother, the youngest, who shared secrets with me many years ago, and I always ‘loved’ him for it. Only he and I exchange emails. He has called me brave and other terms (his last email….“You "sound" very upbeat which is nice - shows how tough you are.”)

This business about sharing, etc. came from Dr. Grossman, where it clicked instantly.
 back on page 3“There is something crucial missing in your life, and that is an attachment to a loving, caring, empathic person. Without that attachment and the brain wiring that goes with it, all of your shame, pain, humiliation, “unlovability”, etc. will be lived over and over and over again in your life because it is the only wiring that exists…

I HAVE lived over and over and over again, all the hurts!….until 2002+ slowly,  the people here in B. C. have set a position in my life, that never existed with Family and Others in Ontario. I have just my brother and he has a way of writing that keeps me on a steady path, so I have told Karla that whenever I die, I want her to have contact only with him….not those that haven’t the time or words to ’support’ me in life.

I have a clinic full of Wound Care Nurses who look after me and we have piles of laughter. The big deal was they never looked for age and thought I was about 55. But I have to tell my age in the Health community for my health’s sake!  They go ga-ga!

Karla and Ellen are still with me and great! Ellen was doing the work in 2 hours (just a one-bedroom apartment) so was making less money than at the first when it took her 3 hours. Now she knows everything and I gave her a raise to keep her---yes to keep her---- and to keep her updated!

Maybe I never said but my lawyer ’cheated’ me by not telling me that all my expenses after the settlement are refundable to me, i.e this new battery chair ($7205.00--free flag), Karla’s Invoices, Ellen’s Invoices, Medications, Bath Lift, special cushion etc.---in just one year came to $15,500.00

As with Hopalong, she and I have in common the fact our daughters are gone from our lives. Just because I feel I’ll never see/hear from mine again, at 50, and 38? years, 5? years of no contact doesn’t mean that Hops won’t, when their estrangement is about 3? Years.

We can all have similar problems, but they start out differently and, at the same time, could end differently.

But the sharing I have done here, since year? and now with Karla and Ellen has made a must better life for me.

My struggles to make it all known are very difficult for me, as I feel my main problem, after checking constantly, is Reactive Attachment Disorder.

Good Luck, GS

Hang In

Xx
Izzy

Gaining Strength:
Ales2, I ran the gamut of emotions when I read your post and ending up laughing with your clever little riff.

My therapist and I talked about this issues yesterday. She sabotaged me so many times. My therapist said she hated me - no doubt but in truth she was twisted lay conflicted and utterly unaware of her hatred and truth be told, I have known since a child, before I knew any psychology, that she really hated her sisters and I was just another one of them. Last month I figured out that the reason she was frozen at mental age 3 is because that is the age she was when her middle sister was born and she lost her mother's attention that she so desperately needed.

Love reading about your insights. I lift my glass to your success and to mine to follow - as soon as I get furloughed from prison -lol.

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