What's Your Role?

This is a magnificent and easy to read book! It just went out of print, but you can grab some cheap used copies. This is the book I read that started my flashbacks and my road to recovery.

Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse (Fireside/Parkside Recovery Book) Renee Fredrickson Ph.D.

http://www.amazon.com/Repressed-Memorie ... r-mr-title

Summary of the book on this subject:

Everyone in the family avoids the victim for their own reasons, either to keep their lifestyle, so they are not abused more, etc... Everyone in the family takes on a role, just like they would in a job. One child is the victim, (which was me in my family,) even though the others might have been abused. There can only be one 'victim'. Those other children either become deniers or they become an abuser. My sister is a denier and my brother is an abuser. His oldest son is an abuser.

Parents can be abusers or deniers or both. In my case my mom was a denier and an Abuser (but not sexual), and my dad was an abuser. When both parents are abusers it gets bad. The whole process is generational and will happen over and over again until the abuser is stopped. Usually the abuser is male - but on rare occasion it can be female such as when there are no boys in the family.

So - In your birth family what was your role?

What role do you play now?

I would be a denier now I suppose. I have spent my whole life trying not to remember or acknowledge this ever happened.

Can I change roles? Can I be the victim as a child and then become a denier or am I still the victim?

How about you?

I don't know, as I'm not the original, to be honest. Ahm, I guess you could say that I'm the one loyal to Daddy, so perhaps in a way, it's a bit of denial? I really do not know. I also have the role of most things sexual in the system, but that's not really related to this...

~Little Miss Margaret~

Eisa wrote:I'm the one loyal to Daddy, so perhaps in a way, it's a bit of denial? I really do not know. I also have the role of most things sexual in the system, but that's not really related to this...

You think being loyal to Daddy and being sexual are not related? Hm.

One of my roles was abuser. I was required by my mother to stand in for her, to control my siblings. I was aware of how sick that was, and I tried to protect them. Her methods of control were largely abusive, taught to her by her own mother, and in turn taught by her to me. Fortunately, before my own children came along I learned other, non-abusive methods.

Una - You think being loyal to Daddy and being sexual are not related? Hm.

I agree with that Hmm!

I don't remember my dad, but I am afraid those sexual parts of me probably do quite well. I have some who's only purpose is to please a man. That is not normal!



Una - One of my roles was abuser. I was required by my mother to stand in for her, to control my siblings. I was aware of how sick that was, and I tried to protect them. Her methods of control were largely abusive, taught to her by her own mother, and in turn taught by her to me. Fortunately, before my own children came along I learned other, non-abusive methods.

You played the Mother role then? Did your mother abuse those kids as in hitting, sexual or yelling?


Excellent point! Perhaps I am an abuser. I baby-sat when I was about 18 before my oldest was born and I could not handle that. I did have abusive tendencies but not sexual in any way. I could never understand why anyone would want to do that with a kid.

When it comes to my own kids..
In that way I am now an abuser with my kids! My kids are not sexually, physical or emotionally (as in yelling or mean to them) abused, but my oldest daughter had taken my place as mother because my husband likes it that way and because I am not mentally there. In a book I am reading, that is called "Emotional Sexual Abuse". I am working on this with my T right now. I have gotten better since I have started to face things and learned about my DID/DDNOS and my daughter has stepped back and I have confronted my husband. I think I am now acting like a good mother, but she goes off to college in a couple of weeks.

Oh dear. I did not phrase that well, did I. I meant that I believe it's unrelated to this specific question of roles as outlined in the book. Unless that's also in there.

I do know that being sexual is related. I'm the one who actually really likes it and liked it when it happened before. I don't believe anyone else in our system could have handled liking it. Perhaps I'm a bit special that way.

Sarah/Eisa was, to put it simply, the abused one. Both parents and her sister hurt her quite extensively and she just...well, all she could do really was take it. Not precisely fair, but there you go.

~Little Miss Margaret~

Is neglect a form of emotional abuse? If so, my mom was the abuser - unintentionally - and I'm guessing my dad was the denier...? I don't really remember him much from my childhood, so I'm not sure about this. My brother, I have no idea. Maybe the victim? He was the one who shouted and acted out. I was the perfect child who never complained or seemed unhappy in the slightest, so I don't know maybe I was a denier? I still act like everything is fine around my family and hold my tongue. I used to think that my family was the "perfect" family but I think that was my mind's way of protecting itself.

It's interesting to think that even if you are abused, you don't necessarily play the role of victim. I guess my question would be, what would the role of victim look like? The "troubled" child? And can the "perfect" child fit the role of victim? cause that's what I was.

In the Birth Family

The Victim...

This is the one that everyone stays away from. The other siblings are afraid to be close because they will be abused more. Instead they will get closer to their abusers.

The sad thing is they still get abused as much.

The abusers cannot have 2 victims in the home. It's too powerful of a position.

Divide and conquer.

Neglect is a form of abuse. It can be physical or emotional.

The victim in a family is the one singled out to bear more abuse than others, usually from more than one abuser. Often the victim is one who in some way stands out: the one girl among boys, the one boy among girls, the smart one, the dim one, the one who looks like or otherwise resembles most a grandparent or other relative.

My mother has a lifelong habit of severe denial that I believe is related to her own history of trauma. This denial contributed to a non-protective, insecure home environment, exposure of all her children to a wide variety of harm, and lack of appropriate response when harm occurred. To some extent all her children were parentalized (or parentified), meaning that during traumatic events we had to take on the parental role that she abandoned in the event. I was the most parentalized, and regularly was made responsible for my siblings. I learned at a very young age to protect her (and myself from her) by not telling about traumatic events. Instead, I would "stuff" them. If a traumatic event did become known to her, I was told to stuff it. Some of these events now haunt me via PTSD. Some events I managed to report dispassionately, having split off and dissociated the painful emotional burden. Given my family history, it would be remarkable if I did not have DID.

The opposite of a parentalized person is an infantilized person.

Exactly! It's so nice to be talking (posting to) intelligent people!!!

I look just like my dad. Not good in my mom's eyes!

Sarah was also parentalized some, I think, then. Her parents left her in charge of her younger sister from the time she was 8 years old and her sister 6. She was put "in charge" of her sister's behavior a lot--if her sister did something wrong, Sarah would also get in trouble. Apparently because she "should have known better," even if the parents were home and she wasn't even around her sister. That never seemed fair to me at all. Sarah also had to do all the emotional bits herself, her parents never really gave her affection or caring hardly at all.

~Little Miss Margaret~