Posted by Jay_Clockwork_Angels on November 22, 2010, at 17:47:11
In reply to Re: I would rather someone jump in my *trigger* » Phillipa, posted by maxime on November 21, 2010, at 12:50:49
> Well, what type of verbal abuse are we talking about. I get a lot of it from me brother. He does it so much that his first wife left him because they wouldn't take it. I agree that verbal abuse is bad. Maybe Maybe we are confusing verbal abuse and emotional abuse (verbal).
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> But give me verbal abuse any day over being hunted in my apartment and thrown against the wall until blood comes out of my ears on a daily basis. I still flinch if someone puts a hand near me.
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> When people verbally abuse (like really bad abuse) I just shut and I don't hear a thing they are saying. Although yelling scare the sh*t out me for obvious reasons.
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> To be honest, I would just rather live on an island that deal with anything at this point.I am hesitant to jump in here, but having worked at Children's Aid even just for a few years, I saw the worst of the worst, sometimes almost daily. I feel it is pointless to argue that "my abuse is worse than other x abuse". I am not trying to argue, or disqualify anybody's feelings.
One of the reason's my dream was to be a social worker is because my Dad was horrifically abused as a child (many times daily..and there was no Children's Aid, or anything to protect kids back then.) He got both physical and mental abuse. At 5 years of age, he would be chased and terrorized by an *adopted* strict Scottish father, who chased my Dad into a closet, kicking him in the head and back, stomach, and using large wooden utensils and straps belted across his head, throat and face. His step-father even held gardening tools up to his face and left him with scars and wounds that where not stitched.Okay...about the verbal abuse, I have seen it draw 7 year old kids to suicide. It happened to me in a few on my case load, and there where many attempts in there as well. In an odd twist of fate, I go back to my journal at that time and re-read about those cases, and I think it has saved my life. When you see the sheer intense grief parents go through, it still sends shivers up my spine. Plus, I also had to deal with what is becoming endemic, more like epidemic now. That is school-yard bullying. You see and hear about these stories in the news quite a bit these days, and the reality is worse 1,000-fold many times. One really disturbing statistic is that it is actually young girls outcasting and blacklisting other peer girls far more than males. The peer pressure in elementary schools is at a boiling point, and that alone has contributed to the increasing rate of youth suicide.
So, we are not talking about things on an exact, linear scale. It comes in 100,000 shades of gray.
I couldn't hold the Children's Aid job because it was really messing with my mental health. What does start to happen after a few years of terrible shock, is numbness and indifference set in. In a way, fortunately I never reached that stage. (That sounds like an odd statement..but..all things considered..)This is not to downplay any of the effects of any kind of abuse, but that it all has similar effects. Yes, some cases are worse than others on different levels, but it all exists in this huge blanket of such extreme despair. And..one final thought...yes I believe in strict laws against any type of child abuse, but I saw many similar patterns. Many times the parents themselves where barely able to cope with their existance, and the poverty and hopelessness they lived in. The parents are often just repeating learned behaviour from their childhood. Whenever I sat to debrief with a parent, most of them came across as hard-working, nice, caring people. Even ones who did the most horrific things you could imagine to a child.
So, it is the *big* picture in society that has to change. From mental health to economic disparity, and a million points in between, maybe then we can reduce the violence against others.
FWIW, YMMV, IMHO...etc..
Jay
Dx-Affliction of the Human Condition NOS (SOL!:) *thank you 10der :)hahh -
Prozac 20mg x4 daily
Lyrica 150x2
Risperdal 1mg
Zyprexa 5mg
Clonazepam 1mg 4x daily
Melatonin 3mg
poster:Jay_Clockwork_Angels
thread:970876
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20101122/msgs/971023.html