understanding abuse is complicated.

We are so familiar with our family system, we may not even see it as abuse. In addition, abusers do something called gaslighting—see definition. They tell the victim they are the cause of the problem. This is compounded by the child’s need to survive. To believe the parent is the source of their suffering is so intolerable, the child turns on themselves. If a child blames their own behavior as the problem, there is at least the illusion of hope that there is something the child can do to stop it or control it. 

A child has no frame of reference and no defense. Children are forced to adopt and agree with the behavior of adults similar to the way a cult uses mind-control and brain-washing. Abusers create their own reality and demand that family members support the lie. This leads the child to question their own perceptions about everything. Deep down they know the adults are lying, but there is no one to help and no where to go to be rescued. Parents hold God-like power over a child. Abusers use this power to lower their own anxiety, release their own rage and feed the need to dominate. It is soul destroying and casts a long shadow years after the child has grown up and left the home.


symptoms in adulthood

  • Depression

  • Lack of trust in all relationships

  • Fear

  • Anxiety

  • Dissociation

  • Suicidal thoughts

  • perception that life is a burden

  • Constantly scanning the room for danger

  • Dread

  • nightmares

  • Never feeling at rest

  • sleep disturbance

  • Inability to fall asleep

  • Inability to stay asleep

  • Exhaustion

  • Over-achievement

  • Difficulty with discouragement

  • Difficulty with disappointment

  • Ambivalence

  • Cutting

  • Difficulty with sex & sexuality

definitions

 

Gaslighting

Manipulation that causes the victim to question their own thoughts, feelings and sanity. Can include but is not limited to pretending not to understand, minimizing the other person’s feelings, allowing no other opinions or feelings except the abusers, questioning the other person’s memory of events, labeling the other person as crazy.

 

Dissociation

To detach from the present in order to cope with abuse. Once the person has left the abuse, dissociation can take over in any threatening or stressful situation. Can include, going numb, feeling detached from your body, the situation or people. Interferes with memory.

 

Complicated Grief

Painful emotions are so severe, the person has trouble accepting and processing them causing the person to stay stuck. Accepting the reality of your loss, allowing yourself to experience the pain of your loss, adjusting to a new reality (the truth) then moving on with your life in the present are all difficult for survivors of early childhood trauma.

 

Ambivalence

Having more than one feeling at the same time. The feelings will often contradict one another. Example: feeling hatred and love, desire for closeness and need for isolation.