Posted by AuntieMel on June 18, 2004, at 15:37:08
In reply to Re: why people ignore me » AuntieMel, posted by ramsea on June 18, 2004, at 13:33:30
What dad was like......
Awful. No sexual (that would require actually touching us), but moderate physical and extreme emotional abuse.
Physical was mostly beltings - leather and all. For just about any infraction, we were required to go to our room, drop our drawers and wait till he got there, which wasn't always right away. And he always expected the worse. One time when we were blamed for something my cousins did he did sort of acknowledge it after the whippings - by saying "i'm sure you did something you weren't caught for"
The mental abuse was worse long term. Nothing we did was good enough. If I'd bring home a 98 on a math test, he'd want to know what I missed and why I didn't make 100. He told my sister that she worked hard in school, but "too bad you aren't as smart as your sister" and he'd tell me "you're brilliant, too bad you don't apply yourself like your sister." My poor little brother didn't have a chance. He'd try to help dad work on cars and such and he'd be told "you can't compete with the master, so why try"
I knew all about his "performance" problems with my mom. Much more than a 16 year old should know.
When I was 16 or 17 I had to drive him home from the hospital after his vasectomy. Problem with that was he was still married to my mom and she'd had a hysterectomy.
He forced me to give up my first child for adoption, then played the 'poor pitiful me' thing about losing a grandchild.
I told myself years ago I wouldn't rebuff him because one day he'd die and if I hadn't given him a chance to try to make ammends then I would feel guilty. It wasn't for him - it was for me. I needn't have bothered, he never did. He behaved the same till the day he died.
Anyway these are a few examples. Therapy has helped. There are a few people in the world that know of these things, but they were discussed catch-as-catch-can and I always had doubts as to whether this was really abuse or did I have a character flaw thinking it was. One at a time made it seem as if I was being oversensitive.
A few months ago I started going over this in a session. It ended up being a full hour of listing examples. Followed by 5 or 6 sessions of listing examples. All matter of fact - no discussion of any of them - just one after the other - no repeats. It kinda makes you think 'yup - wasn't overreacting - he really was a d**k. It doesn't make it all go away, but it sure lifts a load to know that.
poster:AuntieMel
thread:357478
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20040611/msgs/357891.html