Are Emotional Abuse and Neglect Trauma?

Yes they are.

I am living, breathing proof that they are.  I do not care about any arguments to the contrary, no one will ever be able to convince me that they are not.  They are, period, point blank.

Why are we talking about this today?   Well, there are several reasons.  A couple of weeks back I received a comment from a woman that was raised by a mother with BPD.  She has been attempting to put the pieces together to her own puzzle, and was trying to figure out how her mom had come to be Borderline, and had some questions about my story.  Questions having to do with my mom and how I believe that I came to have BPD, as I had only made brief mentions of my moms involvement, and never went into detail.  I had always been planning on doing this post at some point in time, but her pondering of the subject pulled the idea to the foreground.

Several days after I had received the comment (and corresponded through email with the commenter), katieinwonderlandx did a post that included the video for Kelly Clarksons, Because of you.  Not typically my type of music, but I like anything that I can feel, and feel this (especially with the video) I did.  In fact I can not watch it without crying.  Everyones circumstances are different, but I think that anyone that suffered trauma at the hands of someone else, that caused them to become someone other than who they may have become without it would be able to relate to this.  This just cemented in my head that I did in deed want to do this post soon (I will include both the video and the lyrics at the end of this post).

Its been a couple of weeks since I made the decision to do this post, about my childhood for several reasons.  Its a hard one, and its scary.  There is some research that needed to be done on my part.  I find it hard to find the words to articulate what exactly it is that I believe happened in my family life that contributed to the BPD, as I was not physically or sexually abused.  Its not as easy to quantify emotional abuse, and as the title suggests, not everyone believes in it.  Also, I have a hard time speaking ill of my mother.  As I will explain, everything she ever did that harmed my sister and I, was done out of her desire to protect us, she does love us unconditionally (although I did not believe that until recent years), and she never meant to hurt us, but hurt us irreversibly she did.

Finally, Ive just been to busy, and had to many other things to post about.  So, what made today the day?  Well, I dont have much to post about mood wise, other than feeling quite overwhelmed by my sisters absence today (it is so strange to me how I can feel abandoned, when I clearly know that that is not the case.  Jen even told me yesterday that if I felt like I needed her, to call and she would come over, and I honestly would prefer to be alone today (to hopefully get something done), yet I do feel abandoned, and it still does sting), and the usual night time agitation, anxiety, and not being able to get myself to bed, things have been pretty slow since my last post.  The real push to do it though came yesterday.  My mom was behaving in some ways that are triggering for me (losing her patience with the girls, and yelling at my dogs, and pretty much everyone else), and it reminded me that I did want/need to make myself go through with it.

Ok, on to the actual topic at hand (sorry, I do know that I talk to much, its part of my crazy brain, I feel the need to explain everything in minute detail).  This will be done through excerpts from the book The Angry Heart, by Joseph Santoro, PH.D (all quotes are taken from the book), and my trying (who knows how successfully) to explain what this means in my life.

For the majority of my life I felt guilty for being so fucked up.  I knew that my issues were in part due to genetic predisposition (people can argue back and forth about the cause of mental illness, but for me, I am sure that it is a combination of genetics and upbringing, there is no question in my mind).  I have more than my fair share of neurotic tendencies that are obviously genetic on both sides of my family (all you need to do is attend one of our family functions to observe this), and we also have more than our fair share of family members with serious mental illnesses.  This fact, combined with my natural oversensitivity ingrained in my personality (also genetic) made my propensity towards mental illness greater than the average person.

I also knew that the way I was raised, most notably the way my mom treated us contributed greatly to the way I turned out.  I always just somehow knew that I was raised in the exact opposite way that I should have been for who I was genetically, and that this was the cause of my emotional distress.  I could never reconcile this belief with the facts, however.  I was never physically abused.  I was never sexually molested.  How the hell could I be as messed up as some of the people who were?  It wasnt until recent years that I have begun to understand just how and why my moms words and actions (and my dads lack or words and actions, although I am even more reluctant to lay any blame on my dad) had the affect on me that they did.  Lets take a look at the definition of psychotraumatic experience, shall we?  (Also if you want to take a look at my post, Defining BPD and its Origins, to get an even more in depth look at the psychological processes that can lead to BPD, please feel free)

Definition of psychotraumatic experience – “an aversive event that triggers a fear response capable of causing a person to become concerned about his or her psychological or physical safety while effectively inhibiting the persons ability to protect him- or herself by terminating or escaping the aversive event.  This concept includes abuse, neglect, and invalidation. (Linehan 1993)

Concern about physical safety includes fear of death, torture, mutilation, injury, or exposure to deadly illness.  Concern about psychological safety includes fear of being emotionally abandoned, fear of having your identity invaded by the overwhelming demands of another, and fear of having those whom you depend upon for survival hating you…

The key defining characteristic of a psychotraumatic aversive event versus a nontraumatic aversive event is whether or not the child or adult behaved in a way indicating that his or her psychological or physical safety was threatened and he or she could not terminate or escape it.”

This brings us to the part that I find incredibly hard to explain (to be honest I am starting to feel very panicky just thinking about the idea of attempting it, so bare with me, as Im not sure that I can explain this in any understandable way).  We can skip over the part talking about physical safety because as I said, I was never physically abused, in fact quite the opposite.  My mom was very motherly in the “mom” way, as in we were always physically taken care of.  We were always fed, and clothed and taken care of when we were sick, it was the emotional part that my mom was not good at.

My mom  was never taught to deal with her own emotions (this is actually how I have learned, or am learning to forgive my mom, by realizing just how messed up she truly is, that she was a victim herself), so how was she supposed to know how to deal with ours?  She was extremely strict (more so with me than my sister), and very overbearing, so much so that it caused most of my friends in high school to just assume the she was physically abusing me (which I did not know until years later).

The main issue was my moms worry.  She worries about everything, and that worry, more often then not got put off on us.  How were we ever supposed to be able to trust anyone, including ourselves and the very world around us, when the person that was in charge of teaching us about the world, made us feel that everything was unsafe.  That you truly could not trust anyone or anything, not even your own thoughts.  Her worry also affected us because she worried so much about what others thought of her, and therefore what they thought of us.  We were treated as if we were an extension of her and not our own people with our own separate identities.  She wanted us to be little mini hers, and we werent (we are both much more like our dad), so we were treated like there was something wrong with us, always made to feel like we would never be good enough for her love.

She was (and still is) always second guessing us.  If we were to get excited about trying something, in came moms worry.  All of a sudden we were bombarded with every possible scenario that could go wrong with what we wanted to do, never were we encouraged to follow our hearts or dreams, or ever told that it could be possible that we could succeed at anything.  We were also quite often compared to other peoples children, why couldnt we be like so and sos kids, and how did you turn out this way, I didnt raise you to be like this, were comments heard frequently in our home.  Other phrases often spoken to me included, you better not be crying, there is nothing wrong with you (as she did not know how to deal with handling emotions properly), and things like, are you sure you want to eat that?  and dont eat so fast, you dont want to end up like your mom do you? (because she always struggled with her weight, and was afraid that I would to because I had gotten chubby around the time of puberty.  I am positive that this is where my eating disorders and obsession with my body stemmed from)  Do you see how this could have had the affect on me that it did?  I dont know how to explain it any better, but to me it makes perfect sense.  How can it be possible for me to believe in myself in any way, when the person who was supposed to believe in me and love me the most, always made me feel like I was a failure.  I honestly did not believe that she loved me up until, I dont know, maybe 4 or 5 years ago.  Like I said earlier, I do now know, for a fact that she loves me unconditionally (this has been proven by her actions over the past few years), but I still struggle with this issue.  I feel like she loves me because she has to.  She doesnt have a choice, she is my mom and she just does, but I still have the desire for her to love me for me, for who I truly am, and I dont believe that she ever will.  I am going to include a poem that I wrote about this here.  I believe I may have posted it before but I really think that it explains what I am trying to say better than I ever could right now.  I hope that through the poem and the above explanation, you can at least some what understand, if not feel free to ask me to elaborate.

A Mothers Love

why did you give me life?

what did you hope to see?

why did you want a child?

who did you hope Id be?

someone to take care of

somewhere to lay your worries

someway to change your past

prove you could raise me better

you told me never to cry

because we are not that weak

you taught me that theres strength in their lies

their approval is all that matters

standing in your shadow

I was expected to grow

hidden in your shadow

all you ever let me know

and now you only look at me

with shame in your eyes

and now you always look at me

embarrassed and ashamed

you may have created me

but I am not your reflection

you may have made me

but I am not yourself

I am only me now

I am just myself

but I can not stand alone here

on these legs that you have broken

what will it take to make you see

I will never reach your standards?

what will it take to make you realize

that your standards are way to high?

am I good enough to be you daughter?

was I ever good enough to be your child?

your standards are not real to me

and I dont believe your own

I dont think you trust them yourself

I dont know that you really have faith in your god

this god has left me broken

broken down and imbued with your fears

and I am certain that I have lost my soul

I am not really sure of who I am

all I have is guilt and shame

this confusion that you have passed on

all I ever needed was your love

not your judgement

I want to be seen as me

and not have to worry about losing my mom

Gypsy, 2006

Because of You (Kelly Clarkson)

I will not make the same mistakes that you did
I Will not let myself cause my heart so much misery
I will not break the way you did
You fell so hard
I’ve learned the hard way, to never let it get that far

Because of you
I’ll never stray too far from the sidewalk
Because of you
I learned to play on the safe side
So I don’t get hurt
Because of you
I find it hard to trust
Not only me, but everyone around me
Because of you
I am afraid

I lose my way
And it’s not too long before you point it out
I cannot cry
Because I know that’s weakness in your eyes
I’m forced to fake, a smile, a laugh
Every day of my life
My heart can’t possibly break
When it wasn’t even whole to start with

Because of you
I’ll never stray too far from the sidewalk
Because of you
I learned to play on the safe side
So I don’t get hurt
Because of you
I find it hard to trust
Not only me, but everyone around me
Because of you
I am afraid

I watched you die
I heard you cry
Every night in your sleep
I was so young
You should have known better than to lean on me
You never thought of anyone else
You just saw your pain
And now I cry
In the middle of the night
For the same damn thing

Because of you
I’ll never stray too far from the sidewalk
Because of you
I learned to play on the safe side
So I don’t get hurt
Because of you
I tried my hardest just to forget everything
Because of you
I don’t know how to let anyone else in
Because of you
I’m ashamed of my life because it’s empty
Because of you
I am afraid

Because of you
Because of you

(lyrics taken from http://artists.letssingit.com/kelly-clarkson-lyrics-because-of-you-wfc9rg2)