Anyone else have a childhood similar to that of some of the children/teens talked about in news articles?

[Weebster]

There's no quality life after that.

 

[CommitSudoku]

What news articles are you referring to? I don't keep up with any news, no energy, so I haven't the faintest clue.

 

[WearyHSP]

@Weebster please tell us what you're referring to.

 

[Weebster]

What news articles are you referring to? I don't keep up with any news, no energy, so I haven't the faintest clue.

One article talked about 2 teens who had been chained to the floor, were emaciated, and covered in shit and piss.

@Weebster please tell us what you're referring to.

I'm asking if anyone else here was abused horrifically as a child. I'm talking torture.

 

[CommitSudoku]

No, most definitely didn't have a childhood like that. It's sad anyone has to have a childhood like that.

 

[Weebster]

No, most definitely didn't have a childhood like that. It's sad anyone has to have a childhood like that.

Therapists are useless and can't relate to me. Their empty platitudes are bullshit.

 

[CommitSudoku]

I wouldn't even know what to suggest, I wish you the best whatever you decide to do and hope you can maybe find some comfort in these forums at least.

 

[Weebster]

I wouldn't even know what to suggest, I wish you the best whatever you decide to do and hope you can maybe find some comfort in these forums at least.

There's nothing to suggest that hasn't already been suggested. Yes it's nice here in this in-between zone.

 

[Red Scare]

I used to tell my self thay my life really was not that bad, and that other people always could have it much worse than I did. But looking back at it now, that was only because in my mind as a kid I was thinking of children in literal war zones. While I never had to live in a failed state or anything, I', pretty sure the abuse I put up with would constitute as torture, but I won't get into it because it's pretty traumatic to dredge up such memories. Anything from sexual to physical violence... when times were good I used to think I had moved past it for a long time but now that my life has been falling apart and is circling the drain, I can't really help but reflect on all the things that led me on this path.

 

[WearyHSP]

Therapists are useless and can't relate to me. Their empty platitudes are bullshit.

I'm with you on that! Not only useless but harmful.

 

[Weebster]

I used to tell my self thay my life really was not that bad, and that other people always could have it much worse than I did. But looking back at it now, that was only because in my mind as a kid I was thinking of children in literal war zones. While I never had to live in a failed state or anything, I', pretty sure the abuse I put up with would constitute as torture, but I won't get into it because it's pretty traumatic to dredge up such memories. Anything from sexual to physical violence... when times were good I used to think I had moved past it for a long time but now that my life has been falling apart and is circling the drain, I can't really help but reflect on all the things that led me on this path.

I thought I had recovered and then adulthood showed me otherwise

I'm with you on that! Not only useless but harmful.

How have they harmed you? Mine were just incompetent

 

[Symbiote]

Mom sold me to pedophiles when I was 5, among other crap in my childhood.

 

[WearyHSP]

I used to tell my self thay my life really was not that bad, and that other people always could have it much worse than I did. But looking back at it now, that was only because in my mind as a kid I was thinking of children in literal war zones. While I never had to live in a failed state or anything, I', pretty sure the abuse I put up with would constitute as torture, but I won't get into it because it's pretty traumatic to dredge up such memories. Anything from sexual to physical violence... when times were good I used to think I had moved past it for a long time but now that my life has been falling apart and is circling the drain, I can't really help but reflect on all the things that led me on this path.

imo it'll slowly kill you from the inside unless you allow it to come up. Have you done work (whatever version you like, therapy, breathwork, hypnosis, TRE... there are a ton of options if just talk-therapy isn't your gig - given my experiences I wouldn't recommend talk therapy.)

Also, I'm very sorry for you. My childhood abuse is different in that an event happend that I don't remember but I know when it happened because my life and my body changed overnight. In flashbacks I had terror so bad that at the age of 7, I begged them to "please just kill me!" (so that reaches the bar of torture I believe) I've had PTSD and recurring destructive patterns ever since.

I don't have repeated sexual and physical violence like you (or at least I don't think I did.) That seems more common - I mean, I can't get help because my stuff is so fringe. But I assume, sadly, that a lot of kids have been abused as you were and so I expect there should be groups and counselors who specialize in that background. I'm very sorry if this sounds dismissive, it's not at all what I'm trying to say. "Common" doesn't mean not traumatic, it just means there are probably others out there like you.
If you want to live, then squelching the trauma will only ruin your life. It needs to come out.

Mom sold me to pedophiles when I was 5, among other crap in my childhood.

OMG that's truly horrendous! I'm so sorry.

 

[Weebster]

I'm with you on that! Not only useless but harmful.

How have they harmed you? Mine were just incompetent

Mom sold me to pedophiles when I was 5, among other crap in my childhood.

wow. what age did you escape?

 

[Red Scare]

imo it'll slowly kill you from the inside unless you allow it to come up. Have you done work (whatever version you like, therapy, breathwork, hypnosis, TRE... there are a ton of options if just talk-therapy isn't your gig - given my experiences I wouldn't recommend talk therapy.)

You think I would be here if any of that crap worked? I did not say that I never thought about it growing up, just that I had thought I was past it.

 

[WearyHSP]

How have they harmed you? Mine were just incompetent

Emotional harm not physical harm. I suppose it helps to understand that a traumatic event happened when I was 7, which in flashbacks appear to be that my mother initiated me into a satanic cult. In a later flashback I felt terror, like they were removing my soul from my body and I begged then to kill me. But I have only flashbacks and no actual memory despite 30+ years of doing every modality under the sun that I could afford. (I've since become disabled with a chronic illness so I have no more money to spend on help.)

The preface was just so you have a sense of the deep level of betrayal trauma BEFORE I ever went to counseling. I wasn't a clean slate, right?

1. I clumsily attempted when I was in college. I came back home and my mom got a psychiatrist who prescribed antidepressants and told me they would kill me if I took them all. This was way before the world wide web. SO, of course I took them all. (I wouldn't have otherwise.) So I ended up being 5150d. While I was there, another college girl and I became friends. The same Psychiatrist offered that I could move to the non-crazy side of the institution (sorry I'm not using the right word because it escapes me) and I said no because I didn't want to leave my friend all alone with some really strange people. Then my friend got out early and the Psych angrily told me I was staying on the crazy side. Pure egotistical punishment! Yes, harmful.
2. I saw a therapist around the same time who did two harmful things: 1. He met with my parents one time and when they left he told me I had great parents and all my problems were my fault. Keep in mind that I was suicidal from the age of 7 because of the abuse and somehow that's all my fault. very harmful. Secondly, he asked me to write about what caused my first attempt (it was triggered by a boyfriend who'd been lying to me for years and I'm pretty conviced at this point was a sociopath.) I did as asked, it of course triggered all kinds of stuff and then he never asked for what I wrote and never brought it up again. Because of my family dysfunction and utter lack of entitlement I didn't say anything. I wasn't ever allowed to say anything at home. I was always silenced, so this therapist was harmful in continuing the family abuse toward me. He was just another authority figure who didn't care and blamed me.

After these events I lost faith in therapy and tried a bunch of other things.

Many years later I had a problem with my manager and I never could stand up for myself and as you might guess from the above, wasn't entitled enough to get angry or have a boundary. SO...

3. I got a therapist solely for the work on expressing anger and maneuvering in the office since my boss was a bully. I happened to be dating online at the time and I noticed that she only asked about my dating life. My dating life wasn't the problem my squelched anger was very clearly why I was working with her. The one time after 1/2 a year of working with her that I came to a session with anger, instead of working on it she told me, "Emotions come and go, just let it wash through you." I'd been very clear I'd been bullied and I needed help with boundaries and that's how she responded. She just wanted to hear my stories about dating. Again, a healthy person with boundaries wouldn't have put up with this bad behavior, but I spent tons of copays on her and she just took advantage - the whole reason I sought help was to stop being taken advantage of.

I have more but I'll stop here. You get the idea. So called mental health practitioners who twist the work to their own horrible dysfunctions.

 

[Nightmare Painting]

Most of my childhood is blocked out including experiencing war but I remember enough to know that I was extremely traumatized through all of it. My "parents" were emotionally abusive and neglectful; they never taught me anything useful, nurtured me, or took the time to understand my problems. I lived in a constant state of fear, depression, and numbness both because of war and because I was treated like an inanimate object without needs or feelings. I had and still have so many emotional, mental, and cognitive problems because of experiencing those things that have disabled me for my entire life.

I was too afraid to even ask for basic things or any kind of help as a child because I didn't know how to communicate, had no understanding of needs or self care, and I was afraid of doing anything to set my mom off. My parents didn't teach me any basic life skills like proper hygiene, puberty, opening a bank account, or anything really. My mom would constantly complain about how terrible her life was and everyone around her was or she'd be screaming things at me like lunatic, shut-in, I hope to God you drop dead etc. I wouldn't shower for up to a week or more; sometimes I'd piss myself because I got use to holding it in since I was too afraid to even go to the bathroom and I wouldn't do anything about it. I lived in so much constant isolation and never got any kind of practical help in my childhood.

My father was mostly nonexistent and would just go to work, watch tv, sleep, and repeat the same thing every day while I got bullied at school and abused by my mom at home. I learned in my early 20s that he was supposedly a pedophile but whether he actually did anything to me is not something I remember. I could go on but I suppose that's the gist of it.

 

[WearyHSP]

You think I would be here if any of that crap worked? I did not say that I never thought about it growing up, just that I had thought I was past it.

I don't know you. I don't know what brought you to this site. You didn't mention it so I asked. I'm sorry you're frustrated with my response.

I get it. People frequently give me ridiculous suggestions which imply I haven't tried a million things. But also, you can't have a conversation unless it starts somewhere. Now I know.

 

[ameliacecelia]

I'm with you on that! Not only useless but harmful

A therapist once told me she thought my illness was 'conversion disorder' and wanted to treat me as such. I told a friend of mine about it who is going to school to be a therapist. She said that was a dangerous and unprofessional thing to do as others in my position might accept that and stop pursuing an actual diagnosis. I agree that they can be harmful.

 

[Foresight]

Yes. I lived in a house of horrors. This thread was difficult to read. I thought I would understand better as an adult but I'm more perplexed than ever how an adult can abuse a child. I can wrap my head around neglect. We get tired, we're poor, life is hard, but abuse I don't understand. I hope you find some comfort in the beautifully put in-between zone.

 

[Symbiote]

wow. what age did you escape?

Never really escaped, but she stopped doing that after the suicide of her pedophile boyfriend who got caught with distribution of CP when I was 7. So 2 years of sexual abuse.

 

[eryu]

Therapists are useless and can't relate to me. Their empty platitudes are bullshit.

I used to imagine that therapists would cut their demeaning bullshit for people who'd lived through more severe and obvious sorts of abuse.
Reading people's experiences online, it seems they just do it to everyone.
Someone could be burning a patient's skin off with acid while they were in session and they'd just give them a "Mmmmm, yeah that's rough" and then lecture them about not focusing too much on the pain and forgiving their attackers.

 

[Weebster]

Never really escaped, but she stopped doing that after the suicide of her pedophile boyfriend who got caught with distribution of CP when I was 7. So 2 years of sexual abuse.

Are the effects still there in your life?

I used to imagine that therapists would cut their demeaning bullshit for people who'd lived through more severe and obvious sorts of abuse.
Reading people's experiences online, it seems they just do it to everyone.
Someone could be burning a patient's skin off with acid while they were in session and they'd just give them a "Mmmmm, yeah that's rough" and then lecture them about not focusing too much on the pain and forgiving their attackers.

One rolled her eyes when I told her I hated being on disability and living a substandard life all because of the mental illnesses I developed because of what happened to me.

Others were surprised I'm still alive.

 

[Red Scare]

a traumatic event happened when I was 7, which in flashbacks appear to be that my mother initiated me into a satanic cult.

This stuff has already been debunked by science, and the whole recovered memories thing, is scientifically proven bullshit.

That's not how ptsd works. Memory doesn't work that way, evidence suggests that people do tend to remember traumatic, life-changing events. Especially memories of highly significant events are usually accurate and stable over time; aspects of traumatic experiences appear to get stuck in the mind, unaltered by time passing or experiences that may follow. In addition, it is clear that, rather than being pushed out of consciousness, the difficulty with traumatic memories for most people is their inability to forget the traumatic event and the tendency for memories of the traumatic experience to intrude upon consciousness in problematic ways.

Stories like yours happened all over the country through the '80s and '90s as people reported memories of just-recalled abuse. Some said they were kidnapped, tortured, and raped by satanic cult members who stole into their childhood bedrooms at night and whisked them away to secret locations. They claimed they were so traumatized by these events that they forget they even occurred and were only able to access them, years later, through therapy.

The problem is, none of this was true. The FBI investigated and found there were no cults terrorizing American suburbs at night and no teenage mom being force-fed their own babies and then forgetting about it by the time the school bus came the next day. In 1992, the Department of Justice concluded that widespread ritualistic satanic sex abuse cults were a myth. Eventually, many of the criminal cases were overturned and lawsuits were filed against the therapists and police departments who investigated them. The psychological establishment went through quite a reckoning, and after much research and internal debate, the entire concept of "repressed memories" was largely debunked.

After the allegations were made, children were taken from their families and placed into foster care, and in all, a lot of innocent people went to prison. All the accused were eventually cleared of charges. During the late 1990s, there were multiple lawsuits in the United States in which psychiatrists and psychologists were successfully sued, or settled out of court, on the charge of propagating so called recovered/repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse, and satanic ritual abuse.

No evidence exists for the repression and recovery of verified, severely traumatic events, has yet to be proved. There is also striking absence in the literature of well-corroborated cases of such repressed memories recovered through psychotherapy. Given the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse, even if only a small proportion are repressed and only some of them are subsequently recovered, there should be a significant number of corroborated cases. In fact there are none. There was no scientific evidence of any sort adduced to explain the phenomenon of "flashbacks" and/or "retrieved memory".

Now I know you're probably not going to like this. But I think that you have probably been misled by a therapist or hypnotherapist, somewhere along the way. I wouldn't rule out the possibility that you may suffer post-traumatic stress disorder due to the nature of such illusory memories. I'd also suggest that you sue whatever therapist convinced you of this.

Don't take my word for it though:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...me-not-the-persistent-myth-repressed-memories

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/false-memory-syndrome-alive-and-well/

https://www.newscientist.com/articl...credited-psychotherapy-return-to-wreck-lives/

https://eassurvey.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/ritual-abuse-evidence-false-memory-syndrome-debunked/