On being Adult Survivors of Emotional Child Abuse

Can I hear from everyone who grow up in a traumatic childhood / abusive environment?

I think i am not alone in this situation. I'd love to connect with all of you and ask some questions that i have been battling alone. It is lonely and painful experience being abused when we were young, when we were very weak and fragile.

here are my questions -

2- As an abused child, what do you do when you grow up? Did you deserted your parents, cutting-off all the ties or do you forgave them?

I think most abused child have a fear of becoming a parent one day - they (including me) are afraid that deep down they will continue the vicious cycle. I think somehow our fear are valid - here are a study i've found that prove it

“In a survey of such studies, Joan Kaufman and Edward Zigler, psychologists at Yale, concluded that 30 percent is the best estimate of the rate at which abuse of one generation is repeated in the next. ” (New York Times article, “Sad Legacy of Abuse: The Search for Remedies“)

anyone else nervous about the thought of being a parent?

3-If you married - is your spouse proven to be abuser & worse than your own family, or do you find someone sane & much nicer as your spouse (Some blogger on the internet wrote that they ends up with abuser, the cycle never ends and it makes me terrified on the thought of what sort of people i would end up with)

4- Do you have problem bonding with people, because of your traumatic childhood ( i found that i do have this problem, but i dont know if i could pinpoint it exactly to my abusive background or was it just my personality - i couldnt tell)

5- lastly, if you are married & have children - what have you done to break the vicious abusive cycle from being transferred to the next generations?

6- How do you heal your inner invisible scars?

7- What is something that would trigger your memories from traumatic childhood? Even when I live my everyday life there would be something/some object that reminds me to hurtful memories, and tears would just comes out like that. the pain that comes out of flash associated with you seeing some object that your abuser had used - anyone else felt that? i felt the memories haunted me to no end.

Hope to hear from everyone soon.

For me, I feel very weird that I am just now coming to the realization about how bad my home life was growing up and that I don't have to accept my dad's behavior any more.

I am 39 years old. I struggled with relationships for years ( just got married a year ago ),
Have a hard time trusting people and bonding. Maybe my solid, loving marriage is giving me the courage to stand up to my dad? (Because now my husband is my family ).

I also don't know if I want to have kids. It may stem from the fact that I feel like my dad never really wanted to have my brothers and I. That we were so horrible. I also wonder if I would do the same thing as my dad, and that scares me. So, like you, I have the same thoughts....

Great questions wish I had more time, but will try to make it simple.

My mother abused my brother father and I.Tried to kill my father twice, and my brother and I are badly mentally scarred. That said I am doing fine now. A contradiction.

I see me mother twice a year though this year missed out on her birthday so it will be a year. Nursing home does not understand. She lives five minutes away. I have no attachment to her, I don't know how I will cope when she dies, but the sooner the better. We pay her bills, organise and
liaise with the home (we got her in there), but love went a long time ago. My boys have asked why I do it, they have seen what she is like, and the answer is "because that is what society expects, and I don't want my family to be made to feel like the bad guys".

My wife was abused as a child. Has Hyper arousal as do I and made for some very unhappy times. Also we had zero support from either side and two sick kids and a debt bigger than most small African nations. She never knew I was abused. I hid it well and part of her quirks is she misses the obvious visually at times. It has not been easy. Both boys are great successful despite health issues and right now we are probably happier than ever. (no longer have huge debt). I know more who have married another abuse victim even though they were unaware of it than and abuser. We tend to have attachment issues and tend to "need" someone. So just be aware, don't wear it like a cross, just be aware.

I smacked my oldest son once my wife once smacked our youngest. That is all. After I smacked him he cried and looked at me, and all of sudden it hit me what a monster she was. I could never do that again and never needed to. I don't believe those stats. In my life I have heard that, "all abuse victims go on to abuse, to half abuse victims go on to abuse, now 30%. Just don't believe it. Many people claim they were abused my mother did, and it was totally false. Society has put that up as an acceptable excuse and abusers take it. Never trust and abuser. There was a clinical study of child sex abusers in jail. 66% claimed they had been abused as children. When given a polygraph it dropped to less that 30%. Right figure was probably lower.

I have healed with knowledge. I understand Child Abuse PTSD, the changes to the brain, genes and body that cortisol overload cause. I have not forgiven, I do not forget, I don't cry any more for what might have been. I try to help others and be a good human being, and enjoy life (Carolina Panthers are 12-0, go Kuechly ... (not bad for someone who is referred to always as negative - which of course is common among survivors).

Triggers is stories of child abuse in the news, another child dies, or Munchausen By Proxy cases.