Posted by littleone on December 1, 2004, at 15:06:03
In reply to Re: Wow! I said it! » gardenergirl, posted by Dinah on December 1, 2004, at 9:14:27
> I told him how guilty I always felt for having problems that usually seem to only come with severe physical or sexual abuse. He reassured me (Is reassure the right word?) that the extreme inconsistency and level of emotional disturbance in the home was enough to account for it. I'm still not sure though. I feel such a fraud having so many problems that experts seem to be in consensus only occur in people who were sexually abused, while I absolutely was not.
Dinah, even if physical or sexual abuse were never present in your life, it certainly sounds like verbal and emotional abuse were. I guess you need to remember that emotional abuse underpins all of the different types of abuse and is often the more damaging of the abuses. I've read that it can be the betrayal/inconsistency/etc involved in sexual abuse that is more damaging than the act itself. (Please note that I am not meaning to minimise the experiences of anyone who has been sexually or physically abused. I'm just not very good saying what I mean sometimes).A while ago when my T was kind of insinuating that it sounded like I'd been abused in the past, I was very quick to jump up and say "but I was never sexually/physically abused". He then said something about how he didn't suspect sexual abuse because I didn't fit that particular profile (ie my symptoms didn't).
I've never really sat down and looked up how the symptoms varied as such, but I would daresay that they could be just as damaging in severe emotional abuse as what they could be in the case of sexual abuse.
People don't start disassociating and whatnot just because of a so so childhood. It takes terrible abuse to invoke those sort of defenses. Please don't minimise what you went through (and are still going through I might add.)
poster:littleone
thread:422033
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/relate/20041118/msgs/422951.html