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Anger issues from resurfacing childhood trauma

User Profile: radiantfox
radiantfox June 23rd, 2022

I've been really angry with everything related to my family since i hit my teens basically. And they always dismissed it as being normal or me just being particularly bad or moody or sensitive or entitled and in need of more punishment and mockery. Little things from making fun of me for "seeming grumpy so much" to my severe sensitivity to some issues particularly as they relate to my privacy and consent and the entitlement parents and adults in general feel over minors.


They said moving out and getting a taste of reality will cure that up, since i was so "non compliant" with therapy, when i was covering up their literal crimes for them. As a favor. "For the family". Only really talking about the more normalized things that bother me and strike me as right in line with abusive behaviors and maybe something to suggest moving away from (isolation/grounding, spanking/violent sexual assault of a child, the entire act of punishment in response to emotional reactions or being challenged in any way etc. So that got me labeled as just trying to make issues out of nothing).



And yeah i can more easily distract myself and work on systemic societal changes to benefit everyone and that kinda helps.


But recently this anger is as intense as it was when i was 17 and i better understand it too. Which means i probably should work on it.


Unsure if i can even try to talk to my family about any of this.


If my dad knew about all the crimes and should be crimes at my mom's house he'd have a fit about how he should have had custody and everything would be better if i was with him growing up instead but the damn sexism of the system just labeled him as not a good enough parent for no reason. (Mostly related to physical abuse, broken bones, prone restraint, forced feeding etc as well as less illegal abuse like verbal and emotional)


Meanwhile if my mom knew about his crime (CSA), she'd probably call for his execution and start larping about a concerned parent absolutely devastated from this news who just wish she knew sooner so she could have protected me from ever being in his care



Meanwhile both have been painting me as this entitled brat with unreasonable expectations because i said parental rights are BS and minors should be free to go where they feel safe instead of trapped with the people statistically most likely to abuse them.


And they kept throwing me into therapy to get the therapists to tell me how to work on my behavior and be a better kid even though everyone is held to much lower standards than i am for what "good" is, and I'm expected to just respect my abusers and their right to do whatever they want to their children, but not be critical or adopt any of their behaviors especially when being bullied at school.



Hell my stepdad loved to lock me outside for hours at a time for no real reason other than "kids need outside time" with no regard for the violent bullies in the neighborhood. And my mom would lock me in my room whenever she was at work to help ensure my stepdad doesn't have any reason to break any bones while she's gone, after he broke the collar bone (while she was home and just reading a book, mind you). And then when i was babysitting my 4 younger siblings, my oldest brother was extremely violent and a true threat to the young ones. So i locked hom out for 20 minutes at a time whenever he began to rage out and i had to barricade the kids and pets in a bathroom in my attempt to catch him and put him out. But you know. That must have been my fault, since "kids don't just become violent for no reason. You must have provoked him so youd have an abuse to abuse him like that" ???


Abuse??? You said it was a good healthy and necessary thing when i was his age. You never seemed to change your mind on that. And these neighbors weren't even bullies, they loved to hang out with my siblings and they all got along for the most part.



But yeah my dad was actually pretty good up until the CSA incident. After that he seemed to hate and resent me. And his barbs have never really stopped hurting. And of course I was just over reacting and too sensitive so when i try to talk to my psychologist aunt or my mom about how these things still bother me they interrupt and dismiss me telling me I'm not a kid anymore so it doesn't really matter.


So if i give them more context will they actually start listening to me and caring? Or will they latch onto it as their own project?


Honestly don't even want to tell my aunt at all. I just can't fathom telling my mom anything personal that she didn't blabber to everyone, including her gossipy sister (yes the psychologist. Yes she gossips about her clients, including the ones she has sex with). No matter how much i beg her to respect my privacy, boundaries, or beliefs she just stresmrolls over me about knowing better and how she'll always fight for me especially when i don't know that i need her to. (But still refuse to do anything when i actually do ask for help or change. Then I'm labeled entitled, whiney, lazy, and needing to learn to fight my own battles).



She vaguely admits now that my childhood was awful, but she seems totally unwilling to change anything. (She did divorce the stepdad. Well after i moved away. Because he had sex with someone else, not because of how he treats children or clearly gets a sexual thrill out of physically punishing them without technically breaking any laws. I saw his porn history, barely legal stepdaughter porn and bdsm and he's the one most obsessed with finding excuses to spank or otherwise physically overpowe and dominate me... Very creepy dude. Threw a fit when i was 14 and my mom started suggesting i was kind of well too old for that too be appropriate because he didn't like her painting him as a creep "just for being a good parent" etc. And yeah i had several "real CSA" experiences by that point and I'd take any of those experiences over his "respectable" version any day). So she left him but....still demands her kids "respect" him. For no reason other than family/father.



I can't even talk about going to a community or environment better for me (I'm very far left. Looking at Washington. Currently in Oklahoma and completely miserable and feel super trapped and coerced and stuck in a system of abuse and victim blaming and i hate it). And all they do is complain because "family is all that matters and all you can really count on" and trying to brainwash me into thinking my family is somehow my support network. Because that's the narrative they've decided to run with since it's normality and i "only reject it to be rebellious and hateful"



But my aunt is my slumlord so i can't break all ties until i do move out of this state. But she doesn't life anywhere near me at least. But my mom is maybe dying and she keeps trying to guilt trip me into talking to her. And all she wants to talk about is how judgemental she is because I have no interest in going back to college or getting any kind of "traditional" job and certainly not working within a typical/hierarchical job structure.



I'm so sick of it . I'm sick of them feeling entitled to know anything or have any kind of opinion about my body or my life. I'm so sick of them acting like nothing that ever happened to me is ever really that big of a deal. I'm sick of the way they dismiss my chronic pain and psychological struggles as just needing to work through it better.


I'm so sick of all of this and how their worldview is so normalized, echod constantly in public. How they pull this poor victim routine about how I just hate them "for having different beliefs".


Hell my roommate left their family because violent white supremacists and i told my family about the safety concern and the need to protect our location. So when the Nazis took out a PI, oh look at that, slumlord aunt sold out our location because those oh so poor parents that have a right to know about their child.


I want nothing to do with these people. But i also would like for them to be what they claim to be and maybe get perspective and quit pushing their narrative. Maybe by knowing about what the other parent was doing and how their very own handling of their own abuses and the victim blaming and the downplaying and excuse making etc easily transfers over into "well if it's true there, it must be true with this issue that bothers me less too.".


But I'm sick of being proven naive and constantly victimized by their constant narratives of change and caring and concern and just wanting to help, before lashing out at me and putting me down for feeling anything they don't approve of.


I can't stop being angry and i feel like i need to talk about this and get some kind of closure. But when I think about doing it i can't help but rage even worse. Like just thinking about what i might say to my mom i end up screaming some phrases irl pretty randomly.


I just can't handle this conversation. I can't handle these people. And they will never acknowledge they aren't entitled to my life or my personal details. And by telling them these secrets in a final attempt to actually connect and talk thinga out like actual humans, I'd just feed into that entitlement mentality.

.

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User Profile: radiantfox
radiantfox OP June 23rd, 2022

Brilliant barbs from my dad include when i had a stalker in high school that was making homophobic threats and the like. He said i must be asking for it and deserved it since i had dyed hair a few years back and really shouldn't act so surprised when someone actually notices me when I'm clearly just looking for attention.


That one in particular still has me raging hard enough to really want to take my baseball bat and do the kind of senseless property damage i had too much self control to get out of my system when i actually was a teen and people might have excused it away as hormones and under developed brain and whatnot.

User Profile: emailcricket
emailcricket June 24th, 2022

@radiantfox I'm sorry I don't know how to truly support you. I can virtually sit with you and we can chat about our similar experiences, but I don't know how healthy that would be--because my childhood trauma wounds are just opening up.

I think I am going through the same kind of spontaneous resurfacing childhood trauma. I am finally taking baby steps to get actual therapy. This is huge for me. In our house, and I strongly suspect you heard some variation of this as well, "What happens in our house, stays in our house." So for me to seek therapy is a huge huge step against the wishes of my family.

I'm not going to tell you to move on, or get over it, or it's in the past, or let it go. Or worse yet, 'we have eyes in front of our heads so we can look to the future.' Those platitudes never help. And I have heard them all. It's the stupidest thing anyone has ever said regarding trauma. Because if you could have let it go, you would have. I mean, who the hell wakes up and says, "Hey, I think today would be a great day to revisit some really dark childhood trauma and I think I'll be reactive to it. Yup, sounds like a great day to me! Let's do this!"

No one wants to have this follow them for life. You didn't ask to be the subject of such pathetic, reprehensible, and terrible behavior. You didn't ask for any of it. But it was given to you. What are you supposed to do with it, like literally?

So what do folks like you and I do now? We have this deep dark very bloodcurdling childhood trauma and it just sits there, somewhere inside where it really can't be reached. We can't just pick this part of our life out and throw it away. It's always there. I would love to give it back to the people who gave it to me. That would lift a weight off my shoulders and put it back on them. Not sure how to go about that though. I don't know what to tell you. I don't know how to get your childhood back. I do want you to know I get 'it.' I get what you are experiencing. I can empathize, sympathize with, and understand through my own experiences.

I do sincerely want to thank you for writing about what happened to you. It really struck a chord with me and let me know I am not the only one who had parents as I did.


[In a very short synopsis, I was r*ped at 7. I told my mom what happened. I just discovered yesterday, that she did absolutely nothing. She kept it a secret--didn't tell my father, my aunt (where it happened), or the law. Now I have the additional guilt of wondering how many other children he violated and I could have stopped him if I didn't listen to her and I kept telling people what happened. Then I think back to how she immediately started telling people not to believe anything I say--I made up stories, I exaggerated, I was dramatic. The plan to save her sense of self was her first action. Not to get me immediate medical attention, therapy, or press charges. It was to save her sense of self. The ridicule and abuse to keep me in line was relentless and I am just seeing the truth 50 years later. See, I wasn't supposed to be at my aunt's house. My mother was having an affair. She would have to tell my father why I was visiting my aunt more than 3 hours away. And well, if I told him what had happened and where it happened, then I would be the one responsible for breaking up the family. So ya, I get it.]