Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board

Glad I found this site

(1/2) > >>

yuki:
I just wanted to say hi. This is my first post here. I found this site a while ago and the concept of voicelessness explains what I've gone through better than anything else. I've had 5 years of therapy and read a lot about emotional abuse - "voicelessness" makes the most sense of anything I've heard.

I've spent over a year in an abuse support group. I learned a lot and yet most of the people there had suffered physical forms of abuse so somehow I felt like I never could really relate. Something just wasn't quite working for me there. I hope I'll be able to find what I was looking for here.

I had a N mom - controlling, emotional, depriving, enmeshed and waaaay out of touch with reality. My dad was alcoholic and completely shut down emotionally. I think he must be dissociative because it's like he's not even there. He hardly talked at home and flat-out ignored me. And... that was it. I was an only child and we were very isolated. I know it's unusual for a N to be so isolated, but she was. I was the only person she had in the whole world. I was more like her pet than a person, or maybe a doll. Not supposed to be a person. I had an emotional break down when I was 10 and have stayed depressed and emotionally shut down ever since. I moved out (got out!) when I was 20 and began therapy. It's been about 5 years... I'm still in therapy.

The "voicelessness" idea is so great because I really felt so voiceless. I feel like I slipped between the cracks a long time ago and nobody noticed. I still feel like I am removed from the world. I haven't found myself and I haven't found my voice although my therapist says they are there. I have no direction in life. I feel so lost. The "voicelessness" was so bad - not only did my parents not listen or not notice who I was, I was even forbidden other forms of expression. Not allowed to listen to music. How I dressed, spoke, acted, the movies I wanted to watch, the friends I had from school - they were all super-controlled and judged by my mom. Everything was invaded or taken away or condemned.

I still have some problems with "believing" all of it. I still try to blame myself. Sometimes I can't believe that THIS much damage was done to me. Sometimes I think that I MUST be doing something wrong now because I SHOULD be able to just get over it and fix my life already. My life is hardly functional and I am very cut off from everything. I hate it but I don't know any other way of being. I don't know how to do anything else.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

bunny:
Welcome yuki,

Thanks for posting. It sounds like your childhood resembled a prison sentence at a maximum security facility. My mother was also controlling of my clothes, reading, music, etc. After graduating college, I discovered all kinds of things of which she would've disapproved or not taken an interest. Maybe you haven't yet given yourself permission to discover all the things that interest you.

bunny

Anonymous:
Hello Yuki,

welcome and I could see so many similarities between your parents and mine except the gender was reversed. My dad is super controlling, it was he who was living my life and my mother was never there for me for anything. I too ran away when I was 24 and have now applied for therapy only now ! you are ahead of me ib that regard !
I also felt if I would feel out of place in abuse survival groups becuase I never was physically abused and I was taken well care of financially.
Like your therapist says we all have voices, and for those of us who have been abused onw way or the other, it simply takes time

keep posting
spirit

mighty mouse:
Hi Yuki,

Getting your voice is the first step in getting a direction in life....I myself always felt like my identity had been stolen. It's hard to "be" in this world with no identity.

I remember my Mom making a big deal out of us kids watching the Carol Burnett show (I'm dating myself here LOL), because it was "dirty". She also said the same thing about a book I was reading one day....dirty. And to this day she castigates me because I love Barbra Streisand (She doesn't like Barbra's politics - so she's bad). I think this sounds pretty silly and I bet your Mom sounds just as silly.

You are starting early getting the tapes out of your head. It takes a while.
I think reading other people's experience here (there are many others with covert Ns) will help you greatly.

Posting often helps you to compare your situation with others and makes you know deep down you aren't crazy. Good luck to you.

MM

yuki:
Thank you for the replies. :)

It was a lot like being in a maximum security facility! I was even "kidnapped" by my mother once and spent about 6 weeks living in hotel rooms with her, with almost no contact with the outside world. She'd been having emotional and marital problems, and that was her solution. She told me about all of her problems and we cried a lot. I went with her willingly... but I was only 10 and "brainwashed" and very tightly controlled - I really had no choice. She told me that she was doing it to help me. I should have been in school at the time... (it wasn't until very recently that I realized that I hadn't really gone with her willingly and that it was more or less kidnapping).

I'm so glad I got out of their house when I was 20. I'm still amazed that I was able to.

I think I still haven't been able to find things that interest me. I've found a few but for the most part it is a huge mystery to me. On the rare occasion that I do find something that interests me, it usually seems like I have too many things blocking me to pursue it (like not having any emotional support, not having someone to go places with me, depression, anxiety, etc). I'm trying to give myself permission to find things that interest me. I'm still getting used to giving myself permission to feel ok instead of depressed all the time.

I did find things in common with the abuse survivor group I was in. Emotional abuse is present in every other kind of abuse, so I did have some common ground with people there. But since my abuse was mostly emotional (only once or twice that I know of I was somewhat physically abused. My mom would get angry and give me hard spankings because she thought I'd done something wrong when really I hadn't done anything wrong. She just never gave me a chance to explain or defend myself... more voicelessness) and I was also taken good care of financially it just seems like I have a lot of different issues than people who went through repeated physical abuse.

Oh, Mighty Mouse, my mom was just like that with "dirty" things. I never knew when she'd flip out over something in a movie or TV show I was watching (and it would be my fault for watching something bad). She'd also get angry and accuse me of using sexual slang words or saying things that had a sexual meaning or making sexual gestures when I was really young, like 6 or 7. She acted like I knew exactly what I was doing and was doing it just to be bad. Looking back now I can see that I wasn't even doing the things she was accusing me of - she was just reading the worst possible meaning into things. She was also so out of touch with the rest of the world that she didn't even know current slang... so she would assume the worst. I got so scared of her... because I had no idea what was "bad" and what wasn't... I got really, really careful about how I talked around her and I stopped even asking to see movies or TV shows that I wanted to see, because I had no idea what might be in them. She used religion as her excuse for restricting me, but it was really just about control. More voicelessness for me... more of me having to suppress myself.

Thanks for reading. I'm finding that I have a lot to say. That was a problem for me in the abuse survivors group I was using before, because a lot of people there just won't read long posts. So it was either... write everything that I have to say and don't expect many people to read and reply... or keep it short and get some replies. I don't mean to say negative things about that place because I appreciate it very much and it seems to work for a lot of people... but it felt like sometimes the only way I could get support was to get right to the point and keep it short instead of writing what I wanted to. I notice that the posts tend to be longer here, so, I'm hopeful... :)

Yuki

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page