Blocking and abuse

[adrift]

First, I apologize if this post bothers anyone.  It is sexual in nature, with regards to molestation, so some of you may not want to read any further.



I've wondered on occassion if I was ever sexually abused/molested when I was younger.  I have no memory of such a thing happening, but I do remember how horrid I thought it was when I began to grow boobs and how embarrassed I was of them in front of my dad and how uncomfortable he was with my blossoming female body.  He developed a serious dislike for me then.  Also, he never liked any boy I dated, and I was so uncomfortable about "sex" when around my parents, that when we went on vacation with them, I found a reason to sleep in one bedroom with one of our kids while secretly insisting to DH that he sleep in another bedroom with the other kid----I just couldn't sleep in the same bed with my husband with my parents in the same house.  Is that really too weird or what.  I was only ever such a prude around them?????????

  Also, I didn't ever  know that it wasn't proper (forgive me if I'm going too far) to spank children without their panties on, but all when I was a little girl my dad made me remove not only my outerwear but also my underwear when he spanked me,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,and he spanked me a lot!!!!!!  He used to brag that I got a spanking every day.  I think I probably got to stop removing the underwear somewhere between the ages of 6-10. 

The most sadistic thing, though, was that once he made me spank him.  (O.K., do I feel weird now or what, only my DH knows this)  My school grades were a continual source of conflict between he and I.  He insisted that nothing on my report card be below an 85 and usually my math scored were pretty low.  So every time the report card came home, I got my  butt beat.  One time, he was so pissed about my grades that he handed me the belt and insisted that I spank him because it must be something he was doing wrong in order for me to be doing so badly.  I balked, refused, begged to not have to do such a thing ((it felt so wrong, so dirty------but yes, he did have his clothes on the whole time)) but he insisted.  And he bent over the bed (he always gave me my spankings by making me bend over the bed) and made me give him about 10 (I think) pretty hard licks.  It felt really sick to me----sick in a perverted way. 

I NEVER in my life felt comfortably physically around him and never could stand to hug either him or my mom.  I hated their touch all my life---and I HATED touching them.  It just felt so gross.  But I had always decided it was because they had been so hard on me emotionally that I transferred that into hating the physical elements as well, and maybe it was only that.  I don't want to think I was molested, I'm not searching or hoping to go there. 

Here's something I read, though, that struck me as so totally odd that I had to post all of this

From this website,  http://homestar.org/bryannan/checklst.html    I read the following

One of the biggest red flags is loss of memory. If you find you can't remember anything before the age of six, for example, it's possible you've blocked out something painful to know about. Some survivor's get more specific in their block-outs: they can remember being little but not their childhood bedroom, or the kitchen, etc. Sometimes a survivor will only block out a specific person. If grandma lived with your family as a child but you can't remember any interaction with her, this is an important clue.

O.K., here's the deal. I kinda remember my grand mother living with us (like maybe 3 true memories, the rest being what I've "remember" from photos of her being at our house) but in a letter my mother wrote to her sister, my mom wrote that I "slept with grammy every night" ???????????????? She lived with us on and off until I was 6 years old, how come I have absolutely no memory of ever sleeping in the bed with her.  My mom never mentioned it once to me.  The letter I read it in was one my mother's sister sent me after mom was dead.  I did sleep with my parents until I was at least 10 years old and mom really tried for years to break me of it but without success.  I remember asking mom how I ever got so used to sleeping with them and she said it was from a trip we all took back to her home state (all of us being her, dad and me) and that the week we stayed there with her sister, I had to share a bed with them because it was a small house and I just got used to sleeping with them.   This smacks so much like  one of my mom's many, many lies.  So I wonder if I really just got used to sleeping with Grammy and when she left I then moved to my parents bed.  Why wouldn't mom have ever said to me EVEN ONCE, that I had slept with grammy.  The woman would have been way too old to molest anyone and besides, I think she was a really good woman (other than the fact she was a crappy mom to my mom but that's a whole nother story). 

O.K., I don't really think I was abused and I don't think I'm stuffing memories, but the whole thing does puzzle me.

Adrift

[Certain Hope]

Dear Adrift,

   My childrens' father had some very inappropriate and twisted ways of expressing his own issues with his sexuality toward my daughters. He never had a chance with my son, who was only 6 months old when I left him. One of his final instances of sexual abuse in our home was to carry around our infant boy while exposing his privates to the girls.

   How could a kid grow up to know what's normal when she's picked up on so much twisted input growing up? Even if a parent never actually perpetrates a form of abuse involving direct contact, his message gets through to the child... and it never fails that the child interprets that message to say, "there is something wrong with ME; I am flawed; it's all my fault." 
  I know it took quite alot of talking and a good amount of time in a safe environment before my girls would even go to bed at night without wearing sleep pants over top of shorts over top of underwear.

  This man was also an expert (especially with my oldest daughter) of setting her up for failure. He got a thrill out of catching her doing something wrong so that he could tear her down verbally. It sounds to me like this is what happened with you re: your grades... it was a set-up... something that he could count on as his outlet for some more of his own twisted, sexualized rage.

   I can see how every bit of knowledge about who we are as women and sexual beings can spring from how our parents acknowledged (or failed to acknowledge) our sexuality. I say that it can, because I don't believe that it has to. We can change our view of ourselves by acknowledging that the way "they" may have treated us does not reflect on us at all... it was all about them. To me, seeing it that way, in the light of reality, brings a sense of peace, instead of trying to dig out every possible memory or explanation from our earliest history. I say that because it helped me to stop trying to find reasons from the past for why my own daughters might be having trouble with this issue or that. Instead of constantly relating everything to past negative experiences, which only served to make them feel more damaged by their own exposure to this sicko, I felt that I had to be able to present new, healthy information to them and let them see and appreciate the difference. I hope this is making sense, because it's not something that I've ever tried to express. For many years, I despised my ex-husband for forcing my girls and me both to deal with some very difficult topics which robbed them of their innocence. But there comes a point where innocence can be regained, I believe, and that point comes when the wrong, unhealthy behavior is set in its place, in the past, and new, positive experiences become the goal.

   I hope this doesn't sound like I'm trying to hurry you through to the other side, because I'm not. I don't know what you might have to go through in order to process all of these experiences you've had. I'd only like to hold out to you an assurance that you are not "damaged goods" because of your father's twisted thinking and behavior. It is possible for you to come to a healthy and whole acknowledgement of your own sexuality and say... "this is how I could be, after all that I've experienced, but I choose to take a stand to regain my innocence and focus only on healthy models of behavior".

    Personally, I went from marriage to the child molester to marriage to the N.,, and after all that, I told the man to whom I'm married now that I felt like so damaged and incapable of having a "normal" relationship... I wouldn't know where to begin.
Well, he and I are both Christians and firmly believe that God does make all things new again, and that this same God of new beginnings had brought the two of us together.
When we were courting, my husband presented to me a concept that I'd never considered, and that was this regaining of innocence I've mentioned. In our case, it was like a relinquishment of the past and a rebirth of virginity for both of us. Does it sound nutty to think of becoming a virgin again, restored to a place of purity and chastity that had long ago been lost? Maybe so, but I can tell you that it works and it goes far beyond  "mind over matter". It's a purging and a cleansing of all the old rubbish that's accumulated over the years and stepping out in faith as a new creation. I don't know how to do that except in Christ and even then I fall flat when I take my eyes off Him. But all I have to tell you is what I know for myself, offered in love, with the assurance that you are not the product of anyone else's garbage... not your dad's, or mom's, or grandmother's... not anyone's. Whether we each find bad or good in these people of our past or present, I have found that we cannot build an altar to our findings and rest there.
That sort of monument only gets in the way of who we were meant to be in the first place. I wish you all the best in your search.

Hope

[DreamSinger]

Dear Adrift,

I'm an incest survivor, and I can say that one of the biggest blocks to personal healing is attempting to classify our experience right off. While it's important to name that wihch had been unnameable and unmentionable, I believe that will come in time as you deal with each wound or memory as they come to you. You'll tell yourself what you need to know when you're ready to know it. It's one thing to listen to another person's story for insight and information, but it's an entirely different matter to let another define your experience for you.

What if you weren't clinically sexually abused? You could argue till the cows came home whether what you went through was sexual abuse or not sexual abuse. But how helpful is that?  That's an intellectual discussion, isn't it?

The main point is that you hurt. What your father did to you hurt. The dynamics of your family hurt. If what happened is not diagnosed by some as sexual abuse, does it make it less damaging, less hurtful? Does it the impact it had on you all these years? And most importantly, what would a diagnosis, one way or another, mean to you? If the response is, no, does it mean you walk away from the pain...or run? If the answer is yes, what will that mean to you in terms of choices..empowerment or nonempowerment?

As far as memories go, there are a lot of ways to trauamatize a child. Very little memories or no memories don't necessarily mean sexual abuse, but in my opinion, are flags that do indicate something traumatic.

I think it's enough that these issues bother you, distress you enough to seek answers. To me, that is all I need to know. As you sit with yourself, as you give yourself compassion, as you let your emotions come up out of these memories, you will gain better insight into your situation. Things will start to fall into place, but don't make the mistake of backing off from addressing something that is hurting you just because you can't fit it into a catagory at this time or panicking into places you may not need to go.

Reading your experience, I'd say what you went through was abuse. Exactly what catagory it would fit into, I have my own opinion perhaps, based on what little information I have, but it's how you see it and what it means to you that counts.

Demian,
  ~DreamSinger

[Plucky]

Hi Adrift,
Maybe you have heard lots of horrific stories about abuse and hesitate to classify yourself with them,  or think that to equate what happened to you as the same thing, would be to minimise the pain of others who have gone through what you think is much worse than your experience.

I agree with Demian that you don't have to classify yourself, in order to try and deal with the effects of what to me personally, looks like clear abuse. I remember reading somewhere that even negligence in exposing the child to pornography can be classified as abuse.  That sick spanking is certainly much more blatant.

Thank you jac for that very informative article.    A lot to chew on there.

every bit of knowledge about who we are as women and sexual beings can spring from how our parents acknowledged (or failed to acknowledge) our sexuality.

Hope, this is very insightful.  This thread is 3 for 3 so far in my opinion!

A score-keeping
Plucky

[gratitude28]

adrift,
I can only imagine how hard it was to write all of that down and see it as you wrote it. THERE IS NOTHING NORMAL THERE! What you describe is sick on your father's part and not at all right to do to a child. You were abused... even with what you wrote here. Even if there was nothing more than what you remember... what you have written here is by no means a normal, healthy environment for a child.
I haven't read the other answers yet... I'm sure others will have ideas as to whether you should try to remember more or not. I would say that if you can't remember it, and if more did happen, let it go unless you feel some need to know.
You are the wonderful person that you are now... not the person who was used by her parents. You are getting so strong (evidenced by your ability to share your story with us!!!!).
Love you and thank you!
Beth

[Hopalong]

Adrift,
That was SO brave of you.
That post was the action of a brave, surviving woman who's listening to a voice deep within that says dammit, I do not want to feel this blankness, I want a WHOLE full LIFE!!!

That's how I hear you.

Demian's advice strikes me as both tremendously wise and deeply beautiful.

Hops

[penelope]

wow jac -

I found myself getting tenser and tenser as I read that.  Which typically means it's hitting some nerve...  thank you

bean

[adrift]

THank you for listening.      THanks to all of you for your replies.  You all are a very kind and supportive bunch  ((((((((((board))))))))))))

 

[Gaining Strength]

Dear Adrift -

I read what you wrote and had some similar experiences.  My father spanked me as a child - pulled down my pants and spanked until welts appeared. (He would spank so hard that I cried and then he would spank me more because I cried, telling me all the while to stop crying or he would spank more.) I was never allowed to date unless it was to a cotillion or debute party that was "date selected" by the hostess.  And by age ten, I did not feel comfortable hugging either of my parents.  It was simply a formality with no true feelings behind it.   Though there have been times when I wondered if I had been sexually abused as a child I came to realize that that was not my experience.  But part of shaming around sex and sexuality for me was just part of the larger experience of being wholly and completely shamed simply for existing as a member of my family.  For me, as I have written in anothr post, shame was the all emcompassing experience and sex and sexuallity was the most shaming of all.  Maybe that's because sex is profoundly intimate and a narcissist must fear intimacy most of all - of course, it requires relating with another human being.  (In recent years I have come to realize the my father also has strong mysogonistic traits and that of course was a complicating factor for me as his daughter.)

Based only on what you described in your post, it is hard to know whether these experiences point to hidden memories of sexual abuse but as other replies have suggested your feelings are the fruits of abuse regardless of how that abuse was meted out.  It has taken me many, many years to be able to claim for myself that I experienced abuse.  In part I have had a hard time doing so because no one in my family would corroborate that claim. Nor would any of the friends I grew up with nor my parents friends.  It has taken me many, many years to recognize that it is the fruits of the abuse, the scars and crippling effects of the abuse that make it clear to trained professionals regardless of whether I can produce the smoking gun or not.  I have no interest or need to have anyone agree with me that I experinced extreme neglect and abuse now that I have been able to acknowledge that for myself.  In fact I will discuss my understanding of my childhood experiences with any one in my family.  They have historically denied my take on our family experiences in general and my memory of my experiences in particular.  A significant passage toward healing came for me when I accepted as fact, my belief that I had indeed experienced abuse.  Once I did that, my of my life's struggles made sense to me.   

I did need someone to confirm my own diagnosis and I got that from my psychologist and psychiatrist.   Affirmation and confirmation from someone other than myself is simply essential for me in understanding and processing my experiences.  I hope to find lot's of that here in "voicelessness".  Thanks for sharing.

[DreamSinger]

Hi Gaining Strength! I haven't had a chance to read your other posts, but I wanted to welcome you here.

I did need someone to confirm my own diagnosis and I got that from my psychologist and psychiatrist.   Affirmation and confirmation from someone other than myself is simply essential for me in understanding and processing my experiences. 

Yes, I do agree. Validating self knowledge is a wonderful and incredibly healing gift, and something I have found essential in my healing journey. To have your own diagnosis, or your own "stumbling", "discovering", "unearthing" of your experience  validated, to have a name placed on your experiences is very important. This is something parents should give to their children, to give a name to their feelings, to validate what they experience as a result of other people's impact on them, to name something for what it is is all crucially important to healthy development.

But when you grow up with people who hurt you and then say they love you or hurt you and act like it's no big deal or it didn't happen or it wasn't abuse because you deserved it, there's no validation for your experience or for you as a human being. That, I think, is the essence of the wound. However the abuse is inflicted, whether it's sexual, physical, emotional, psychological, verbal or any combination thereof, they are all vehicles, channels for delivering the shame that "suffers" you for having your very humanity and assessment of yourself and your world invalidated.

Pick a weapon, any weapon - they all make you bleed.

Because I share so much of my experience with music, with writings or spoken word, I have learned, especially when there are blank spaces, to be very careful not to circumvent the right of others to name their own experience. That right was taken from us as abused children. I do not wish to take that right from another on this leg of the journey, no matter how well intentioned. 

And there's so much we don't know about memory. One of the most abusive experiences I have ever had was in my first (and last) support group, 18/19 years ago, facilitated by an incest victim, herself. At that time, she had only begun to deal with her own issues for about two years and at that time, I thought she was a veteran. Looking back now, I realize not only was she a relative newbie, herself, but that she had no business facilitating anything. It's great she found her gestalt group therapy helpful, but she had no business taking it upon herself to think she could lead a group or place words in the mouths of the participants under the guise of helping us get past our "denial".

That experience caused a huge breech of trust within myself, of a trust that was already shaken and tenuous. While I was, without a doubt, abused, she led me, pressured me to connect the dots...when I didn't have all the numbers - this can significantly alter the picture - and this happened systematically with every member of the group. It literally took me years to undo the damage.

I have since learned to listen to what others say, to totally validate what they are feeling and to give a name to what they specifically share with me, as my opinion, but never to fill in the blanks and always to tread cautiously, if at all, anywhere else. I have come to greatly admire the human spirit, and I know that every person will receive their measure of healing as they are willing, and always with a touch of grace.

You have a beautiful voice. I'm so sorry it was silenced in the brutal way it was. To be beaten unmercifully and then to be punished further for giving voice to your pain is horrifyingly evil. You are commended to have found the strength to speak, to have had the courage to be true to yourself, in the midst of total denial by your family. This speaks volumes for your inner self, for that spark of life within you that is so phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes. Do you know how incredibly beautiful that bird is?

Demian,
  ~DreamSinger

[Gaining Strength]

Dream Singer
I love the phoenix image.  I have a magnificent piece of needlepoint made for a card table with the central image is a beautiful phoenix with wings curved down as though it is summoning strength to spread its wings for its reborn voyage.  I will keep that idea in my thoughts as I take flight daily.  Thanks

[Hopalong]

Dear GS and DS,

It amazes me that DreamSinger closes by talking about the phoenix, and GainingStrength follows sharing that she has a major image of a phoenix in her home.

[on edit: whoops, called Gaining Strength -- Grateful Spirit, sorry! (Except GS I'm sure you're both...  ]

But it shouldn't. Things like that happen here.
 
GS, beautiful flowers from loose, rich soil are seldom a surprise...but people who are flourishing like you, like a bloom in the desert, remind me there is always hope, always reason to keep trying. Thanks for sharing your story, and for refusing to wither, GS. Thank you also for reminding me of something obvious that I think it's easy to forget, about the proof of abuse being in the damage.

One thing I think about is how there are universals to how children experience and integrate abuse, and there are also particulars. And some, no matter what happens, are ultimately going to create beauty and harmony from their lives.

Dreamsinger, thank you for this (excuse all the ellipses but this is how I took it in, and it was very helpful to me):

[....]be very careful not to circumvent the right of others to name their own experience.

[....] and for this:

....listen to what others say, ... totally validate what they are feeling and ... give a name to what they specifically share [as]...opinion, but never ...fill in the blanks and always ...tread cautiously, if at all, anywhere else.

Hops

[DreamSinger]

(*(*(*(GS and Hops)*)*)*)

GratefulSpirit? Maybe I missed this on another thread, but I love it I only have time to pop in and out most days now.

Anyway, GS, here's a link to a song I posted here about soaring. You might find that it speaks to you.

http://www.voicelessness.com/disc3/index.php?topic=3024.msg49238#msg49238


Demian,
  ~DreamSinger

[Gaining Strength]

Wow!
Dreamsinger - I am just bowled over by your song. 
No words - won't defile the experience.

Just - Thank You - in the utmost!

Gaining Strength - minute by minute, step by step

[Hopalong]

Hi GS,
Sorry for the confusion I caused by getting your name wrong.

That's prolly why SoaringSinger DreamSinger/Demian was wondering...

Hops