Three years ago I made a video on Overcoming Childhood Emotional Neglect (see link below). Since I released that video, it has received over 6,600 comments! With all of these comments and questions, I decided to make a follow-up video to further talk about some of these themes. Want another video like this?
Did anyone else experience abusive parents telling you how ‘lucky’ you are that you’re still a kid because you have it easy now, and things are about to get much harder for you once you grow up, because people still ‘coddled’ you because you’re small but once you’re adult you shouldn’t expect anything from anyone, and will have to work much harder to get by? And it would instill complete terror in you because you were barely surviving as it is, things were already so impossibly hard and painful you wanted to end your existence, and by telling you things are about to get harder, you were actually told “you aren’t going to live for much longer“ and it was a big part of why you never expected to live to grow up
Let it be known that I have yet to finish this book, but it has already been such an invaluable read that I feel compelled to recommend it, with a bit of a disclaimer.
I’m on Part Four, Chapter 11, Page 171. I’ve had it for six weeks. It’s due back at the library now. I’m going to have to (gladly) purchase a copy to get through it. It’s been such a challenging read. I put it down a few weeks ago because I was experiencing unpleasant visceral reactions during/after reading it.
On that note, I would advise exercising awareness while reading this - if you become disturbed, tense, or sick, put it down, take care of yourself, and come back to it when you’re able. This is especially important for anyone with a history of acute, prolonged, and/or repeated exposure to trauma/abuse.
It focuses primarily on childhood trauma/abuse/neglect and the effects it has on the developing brain and organism. Thoroughly enlightening stuff here. While the information presented isn’t entirely foreign to me, having it all laid out in this way has put so much in perspective for me, in terms of my own behavior and that of my partner’s, as well as a great deal of the human population for that matter.
Anyway, it’s a must read imo. And I’m surprised I hadn’t heard of it before this year, but I guess I just wasn’t ready for it - I hardly am now.
Our first look into why Rimmer is so completely messed up.
Fiction loves the plotline of characters being forged in the fires of childhood abuse, whose greatest consequence once they leave home being a lack of trust that can be solved with the Power Of Friendship, and whose issues are solved once they confront their parents.
Despite his childhood being used as a constant punchline, Rimmer’s a surprisingly sympathetic and multilayered depiction of how severe childhood abuse can lead to an adulthood of failing to relate to other people in a pleasing or healthy way.
Having never been allowed boundaries as a child around his own interests and person, he fails to understand other people have boundaries. Before encountering his parallel self he’s a creep with women because he was taught that if you want something from someone else’s body, their discomfort and objections are unimportant.
He attacks others before he can be attacked, for he’s learnt that attacks can come from any angle and can be completely arbitrary
Likewise he constantly postures in conversation without realising that he alienates others by doing so, for he desperately needs to cover up his inadequacies before others see them and punish him for them
He takes the path of cowardice because he’s learnt no one will protect him if he can’t protect himself. The fact that by season 6 he can openly admit that he’s an utter coward is a sign of progress
He abuses every scrap of power he gets his hands on because that was what he learnt power was for. He can only see rank in terms of The Oppressor and The Oppressed, which results in him resonating deeply with the lives and philosophies of ancient dictators.
Likewise he despises tales of romance and love, for his parents didn’t love one another (or at least, his mother didn’t love his father). Depictions of passion and loving sacrifice appear deeply unrealistic to him as he never learnt that love could be a fulfilling, moving force.
Still, though he has no framework to understand what a nurturing relationship looks like but he grasps for one blindly, never achieving what he naturally desires but has no conception of.
We can argue “he’s had his entire adult life to pick up these skills” but it’s not that easy, is it? The thought processes that have been laid down since toddlerhood aren’t something that can bebanishedwith therapy and self-reflection. Breaking the effects of childhood abuse doesn’t make the bad thought patterns vanish, it just teaches a person a second set of thought processes that counter the initial unhealthy ones. It’s a lifetime of mindfulness that becomes slowly second nature with practice, but a horrible event could always cause backsliding.
What about Ace? Ace Rimmer didn’t cure himself, he simply learnt a level of self-awareness that forced him to be consciously kind to everyone he met. It’s likely that his initial emotional response to any situation is exactly the same as Rimmer’s but frankly that’s what makes him such a brave hero. Courage isn’t the same as lacking fear, it’s the ability to not let fear prevent one from taking a necessary action.
please remember that you are the only person that gets to decide that your trauma doesn’t/shouldnt affect you anymore. nobody is allowed to say your pain is gone but you. nobody is allowed to decide you’re over your trauma/abuse but you. you are not obligated to forgive your abuser. you are not obligated to be around them if they are part of your family and you are CERTAINLY not obligated to be kind to them. as soon as they hurt you like that they lost the right to have your love, your kindness, your forgiveness, or your time. remember you don’t have to sacrifice your health for their comfort.
real traumatized culture is goin buck fuckin wild and playing ur music/movie/tv show outside the comfort and safety of ur bedroom and then immediately sprinting back when u see someone pull into the driveway or hear the door
it’s bullshit opening up to people that have never experienced abuse about yours because i always get “haha well u can’t hate ur parents they’re the reason ur alive uwu !!” like yeah they’re also the reason i’ve tried to kill myself theresa but ok go off i guess
hey y’all wanna talk about a lesser talked about trauma effect?
loss of autonomy.
not knowing how to do anything without explicit permission or instruction.
feeling like you’ll get in trouble if you do anything on your own will.
waiting until you’re given permission to do so much as eat.
not feeling like your body is your own.
if you experience this you aren’t broken or alone. you were abused and traumatized and conditioned to be like this. remember you belong to nobody but yourself. you are and will be okay.
It’s weird to think that there’s people who are constantly, at-all-times, 100% comforted by/trusting of their parents,, like Who are you? Why aren’t you scared they’ll hurt you?
Some days all it takes is a single unknown man coming into a space I think of as safe to crack me like an egg.
I had no idea why I was sobbing and shaking and rocking back and forth today until about an hour later, when it occurred to me that I was probably reacting to the simple presence of a man who had in no way threatened me.
Sometimes my body forgets I’m not 6 years old anymore, and that most men have no intention to harm me.
I try not to criticize myself for falling apart at times like those. Our bodies hold trauma. It takes a long time to learn to deal with it or, maybe someday, if we’re very lucky, let it go.
Sometimes the outside world makes you unsafe. Sometimes people harm you physically or emotionally, even people you should be able to trust.
And sometimes the inside world makes you unsafe. Sometimes you might cause yourself physical or emotional harm, even though you’re the person you should be able to trust the most.
We’ve been discussing the past couple days whether I am safe or unsafe. We’ve been discussing whether I trust myself not to attempt suicide. For right now, I trust that my thinking is just thinking, with no intention to act. If that changes, if I begin to doubt my ability to keep myself safe, I’ll go to other people who can help me with that, other people who can keep me safe. That may even mean being hospitalized, however much I would hate that.
I wasn’t able to keep myself safe from other people who hurt me, but I can keep myself safe from myself. I didn’t have the resources when I was a kid, but now I do. I *will* ask for help if I need it. I swear it. I swear it to myself and to the people who love me.
how about this: when i was 9 and my stepdad beat me until i passed out and i told my friends at school, my teacher over heard and i was interviewed by cps. they also went to my house when i was at school. when i got home, my step father was waiting on the couch, and told me who visited him that day. he told me if i ever snitched again he would beat me to within an inch of my life.
how about this: my mother locked me out of the house when i was 14 and when i cried so loud the neighbors called the cops, the cop told me i should have been respectful of my mother who was trying to sleep.
how about this. the demon you know is less scary than the demon you don’t.
children in abused households are raised to fear the idea of being taken away. children in abusive households see that help makes things worse.
dont you ever blame an abuse victim for not going to the authorities.
yes this okay to reblog!
Also, a lot of abused children don’t realize that they’re being abused or the extent of the abuse. It’s their normal. Their minds are formed by their experiences and if all they’ve known is one existence it can be difficult to recognize that it’s wrong
STORY TIME!
Under a cut for those sensitive to stories from survivors
I didn’t know that a lot of what I was subjected to was abuse until I was in my 30′s and a partner at the time gently explained to me that what I was describing to him was *not normal* family behaviour.
I knew my father’s physical violence was abuse, that was obvious. But the rest, I thought that was “normal”.
Besides, I had teachers say “I know what happens in your house.” to me and then do nothing about it. The one young teacher who tried to help was told by the school and police to “Mind his own business”.
