How I Was Disciplined As a Child

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today’s topic for Throwback Thursday is “rules and discipline”. I am going to try to keep this post as non-triggering as possible, but if you endured childhood abuse, you might want to skip this post. Then again, maybe what I endured wasn’t abuse at all? Well, in that case actual survivors might want to skip it because it might come across as invalidating.

My parents rarely set clear rules when I was a child or teen. I can’t remember having curfews and, even at ten-years-old, I was allowed to stay awake in my room for as long as I wanted provided I didn’t wake anybody else.

In this sense, none of the provided questions in Maggie’s original post made much sense. I mean, I was often sent to my room as punishment, but I cannot remember what for. I also was never told how long to stay in my room, so I usually stayed for about an hour then slowly re-emerged.

My parents, both of them, also used corporal punishment. However, I get a feeling that they hit me more out of a sense of powerlessness than out of a righteous wish to set me straight. Unfortunately, corporal punishment didn’t stop when I got older. In fact, the last time I was hit, was when my parents more or less kicked me out of the house when I was nineteen. And then I don’t include the time my mother tried to slap away my hand from my hair to prevent me twirling it when I was 23 but I slapped her hand away.

My parents, like I said, didn’t have clear-cut rules, but they did have expectations about socially appropriate behavior. They had their own words for ridiculing me when I “misbehaved”.

The positive side of there not being many clear rules, was that my parents encouraged me to do things most other teens, and certainly disabled teens, would not have been allowed to. I was allowed on a four-week-long summer camp to Russia at age fourteen, being the youngest of the Dutch participants and the only one with a disability (the program officially catered towards the visually impaired). Then again, when I struggled socially in Russia and for this reason wasn’t allowed back the next year, my parents, especially my father, completely guilt-tripped me rather than showing me support.

I was mostly a rule-follower, insofar as there were rules at all. However, as a teen, I became secretive. I actually had my father drive me to a meeting of people with mental illness when I was seventeen, while I’d led him to believe it was a disability meeting (because one of the people there was in a wheelchair). I’m pretty sure he knew, but he never confronted me.

I don’t have children of my own, so I cannot say whether my upbringing influenced the way I discipline them. However, I did find I got easily triggered when I got the impression my sister and brother-in-law used corporal punishment on my older niece (this was before the younger one was born). Thankfully, they were able to reassure me that they didn’t.

Book Review: The Bad Room by Jade Kelly

Posted on by Astrid

Last month, I somehow felt inspired to check out abuse survivor memoirs on Apple Books. I came across The Bad Room by Jade Kelly and it immediately appealed to me, so I decided to buy it. At first, I raced through it. Then, I fell into a reading slump. I finally finished the book yesterday.

Summary

After years of physical and mental abuse, Jade thought her kindly foster mother would be the answer to her prayers. She was wrong … this is her staggering true story.

‘This must be what prison is like,’ I thought as another hour crawled by. In fact, prison would be better … at least you knew your sentence. You could
tick off the days until you got out. In the Bad Room we had no idea how long we’d serve.

After years of constant abuse, Jade thought her foster mother Linda Black would be the answer to her prayers. Loving and nurturing, she offered ten-year-old Jade a life free of fear.

But once the regular social-worker checks stopped, Linda turned and over the next six years Jade and three other girls were kept prisoner in a bedroom
they called the ‘bad room’.

Shut away for 16 hours at a time, they were starved, violently beaten, forbidden from speaking or using the toilet and routinely humiliated. Jade was left feeling broken and suicidal.

This is the powerful true story of how one woman banished the ghosts of her past by taking dramatic action to protect the life of every vulnerable child
in care.

My Review

I was pulled in to this book right from the start. The prologue was captivating! It immediately painted a picture of what life was like in the Bad Room. Then, as Jade describes her life before being taken into foster care, the story gets slightly less fast-paced, but it’s still very intriguing.

Jade is very candid about her own faults. Like, when she’s first in care with Linda Black, she genuinely believes she is different from the other girls in care and she won’t end up being treated like them. She is also open about the moments she tells on or even lies about the others in order to (hopefully) be liked by Linda more. This shows that Jade isn’t a saint; she’s just trying to survive.

It is truly heartbreaking to see how social services fail Jade and the other girls time and time again despite the massive amounts of documentation on their case. I can relate to this in a way. For this reason, I feel that this story is very important reading material for social workers and foster carers in the UK and elsewhere. Thankfully, Jade survived to tell her story. Others may not be so lucky.

Book Details

Title: The Bad Room: Held Captive and Abused by My Evil Carer. A True Story of Survival
Author: Jade Kelly
Publisher: HarperElement
Publication Date: June 25, 2020

Appointment With My CPN

Posted on by Astrid

Yesterday, we had an appt with our community psychiatric nurse (CPN). I can’t remember all that we discussed. I went into some detail about our sadness and overwhelm over the last few weeks and explained that we had signed a letter to the manager requesting more help.

I tried to ask my CPN to get me an appt with the psychiatrist to discuss my meds, as my overload and irritability are increasing. While I was trying to get this out, I constantly heard someone in my mind say I shouldn’t be asking this as it’s attention seeking or drug seeking or whatever. I don’t even want a med increase per se. In fact, I’m at the maximum dose for both my antipsychotic and antidepressant already. I might want something to help with sleep and especially the restless dreams/nightmares. I feel intense shame about discussing that though, as my nightmares aren’t your standard PTSD nightmares. In fact, my trauma isn’t your standard PTSD trauma.

That is another issue I’m facing. Yesterday, I read an elementary school friend’s story of child abuse. It triggered me to an extent, because I can relate. Still, my trauma wasn’t that bad. She is a child sexual abuse survivor. I am not. Though I endured some physical abuse, it wasn’t that which caused my complex PTSD and dissociative symptoms. The most significant trauma in my life was the emotional abuse and neglect.

Of course, I just told another survivor that childhood emotional neglect and emotional abuse can cause C-PTSD and dissociative disorders too. In fact, dissociative disorders are largely attachment-based, so anything that disrupts normal attachment, can cause it. Still, to apply that knowledge to myself, is quite a bit harder.

I eventually did ask my CPN to refer me to the psychiatrist. My nurse practitioner would normally prescribe my medication, but he does consult with the psychiatrist also. Besides, I’ve never even seen the psychiatrist. So my CPN was more than happy to get me an appt.

Book Review: Too Scared to Tell by Cathy Glass

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all, how are you? What have you been reading? After I finished Bloom last week, I couldn’t decide what to read for a while. I wasn’t really into fiction anymore, so I picked up a memoir I’d already started on: Too Scared to Tell by Cathy Glass. I have since discovered a ton of other foster care and abuse survival memoirs I may still want to read.

Summary

The true story of a 6-year-old boy with a dreadful secret.

Oskar’s school teacher raises the alarm. Oskar’s mother is abroad and he has been left in the care of ‘friends’, but has been arriving in school hungry, unkempt, and with bruises on his arms, legs and body. Experienced foster carer Cathy Glass is asked to look after him, but as the weeks pass her concerns deepen. Oskar is far too quiet for a child of six and is clearly scared of something or someone.

And who are those men parked outside his school watching him?

My Review

I struggled a little to get into this book. Partly, the reason was that I’d gotten the idea that this would be Glass’s last foster care memoir. I also judged from the title and table of contents that this might not be a story ending on a positive note. Thankfully, this won’t be Cathy Glass’s last foster care memoir.

The story had many unexpected turns. This is partly because the summary isn’t too telling. There was far more to Oskar’s story than his quiet demeanor and the men parked outside of his school. I ended up loving this.

Oskar stays with Cathy for a long while, so I really got to know him in the story. I also joined him on his journey of progress from his neglectful home through other disclosures to a better life.

Overall, I totally fell in love with Oskar and this story eventually. This was Cathy Glass’s fifth book I read, so I already knew I liked her writing style. I gave this another five stars on Goodreads.

Book Details

Title: Too Scared to Tell: Abused and Alone, Oskar Has No One. A True Story.
Author: Cathy Glass
Publisher: HarperElement
Publication Date: February 20, 2020

Read With Me

Name Your Negative Voice: Dealing with Your Inner Critic #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to my letter N post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today I want to talk about dealing with negative thoughts coming from your inner critic.

You know what? Just because you think something, doesn’t make it true. Your thoughts and feelings are not fact. See my post on cognitive distortions for some examples of how our thoughts can deceive us.

One way of dealing with negative thoughts, is to engage them in a challenging conversation. It may help, in this case, to name your inner critic. Literally give it a name. Then look at it like you would to a really annoying person you meet, who however has little to no authority over you. It may then be easier to ignore or shut up your inner critic.

For example, let’s assume you call your inner critic Donald. (That’s what Anna Borges suggests and I do wonder whether she bases it on some orange-faced creature currently leading the world’s most powerful nation.) If your inner critic were to say you shouldn’t do something because you presumably can’t, you can then call him out on his bullshit, like this.

Inner critic: You’ll not get the job you want, so don’t bother to apply.
You: Shut up, Donald. You don’t know shit.

In this conversation, you’re purposefully keeping your comebacks to Donald brief. After all, you know he’s ignorant and insensitive and yet he doesn’t have the authority over you that requires you actually listen to him.

Another approach to your inner critic, particularly if it originates in childhood trauma, is to see your inner critic as a punitive parent. Then you can create a nurturing parent in your mind to help you challenge the punitive parent. After all, you most likely do generally feel you need to obey your parents more than you need an annoying acquaintance, even though really as an adult you have no such obligation.

Remember, naming your inner critic still requires you realize it’s part of you. Don’t go about blaming others for your own negative thoughts. Even when your inner critic is a reflection of your parents, it’s still your responsibility to deal with it.

As a side note, having a name for your inner critic can, in my experience, also help you see its function. For example, one of my more critical alters emerged as a named inner critic I thought should just shut up. Later on though, I realized she had a function beyond just being an inner critic or punitive parent. For this reason, I do feel engaging your inner critic can really be more than just telling it to shut up.

Was I Sometimes Raised as a Golden Child?

Posted on by Astrid

I have been feeling really off lately. I keep having flashbacks. I also keep having what I’d describe as flashforwards, where I imagine my parents’ reaction to the different possible outcomes of the long-term care situation. These then lead to more flashbacks. One particular flashback I keep having is to a phone conversation I had with my mother when I’d just been admitted to the mental hospital in 2007, or maybe it was shortly before then. She yelled at me “You can’t even wipe your butt without your support worker there”. While this was and still is exaggerated, I do have issues with my personal hygiene, including sometimes with toileting.

I have noticed that there’s a lot of shame attached to my needs. Like, there is this constant nagging voice in my mind saying that I really do manipulate everyone into giving me more care. After all, am I not getting by? This part of me is telling me to erase everyone from my life and just go live on my own, since even if I lived with my husband and no support, there was still my husband to be manipulated.

I was discussing all this with my nurse practitioner last Thursday. He said even if I do manipulate people (and I no doubt do, as does everyone else), these people also let themselves be manipulated. Like, if they have an attitude like they’d rather help me with every little thing than endure my frustration, it’s no wonder I become dependent.

There was this show on Dutch television last Sunday about a second grade class. I didn’t see it, but a term used in it that was repeated often throughout the week, was “curling mother”. I have no idea whether that’s the correct English term, but it refers to a parent who helps their child with everything until they’re eighteen and then magically expects them to have learned independence and leave the nest. My nurse practitioner was reminded of this when I described my parents. It feels odd, because even though yes my parents did help me with every little thing, this expectation that I move out at eighteen was made very explicit from an early age on. It wasn’t like my parents were hoovering over me not realizing that they’d not be there for me forever. In fact, I’m pretty sure they couldn’t wait for me to move out. It just ugh, feels so off. Like I was spoiled somehow because my parents did everything for me.

At this point, I remember a discussion in an inner child healing group in which the original poster commented on some author or speaker saying that the golden child of narcissistic parents suffers a lot. This person was confused, because the golden child is the child favorited by the narcissistic parent, the child who doesn’t get abused (or so it seems). Some people said that the golden child suffers a lot because, well, they are only the narcissist’s favorite as long as they live up to their perfect standards.

I was raised in a household where the golden child/scapegoat roles reversed repeatedly. For those not aware, the scapegoat is the main target of obvious abuse in a narcissistic family. As such, I can relate to a lot of golden child attributes. Like, I was often praised excessively, bragged about and let off the hook. Then again, I was, and this was always very clear, expected to livve up to my parents’ perfect-image plan for me. Once I stopped doing this, I was placed in a clearer scapegoat role.

It still feels off to think of myself as having been spoiled. I know Pete Walker says spoiling is a severe kind of trauma too. However, in society, it is often treated like the spoiled child is to blame for being spoiled. And they definitely aren’t. Only as adults can they choose to undo the effects of this trauma, but they have to admit it first. I have to accept this.

Good Mother Messages

Posted on by Astrid

I am currently working in the book The Emotionally Absent Mother by Jasmin Lee Cori. My first response to it was: why mothers? I was, after all, raised primarily by my father in my early years. Since my mother didn’t breastfeed me, I’m not even sure she was there much at all when I was an infant. Besides, I spent the first three months of my life in hospital, so didn’t have either parent as a primary caretaker then. As such, my main reason for downloading the book was to work through emotional hurts from my past regardless of which parent inflicted them on me.

In the first chapter, the author talks about “good enough” parenting. She goes on to list “good mother messages” children raised by good enough mothers received. Today, I want to share these and my thoughts on them.

1. I’m glad that you’re here. This message shows that as a child we’re wanted. It isn’t black-or-white though, since many children feel unwanted at times, but this message can be countered by a greater sense of being wanted. Some clear memories pop up into my mind now. The countless times my parents, mainly my mother, threatened to institutionalize me when I attended a school for the blind as a non-residential student from age nine to twelve. Also, when I was fourteen, I was rejected for a summer camp and had a meltdown. At some point, my parents were angry and so was I. I said they’d just as well put me in a children’s home, at which point my father said: “None wants you.”

2. I see you. This message is conveyed through our parents knowing what we’re interested in, how we feel about things, etc. I am not sure about this one. On a deep, emotional level I feel consistently unseen, but no clear memories pop up. My father was relatively tuned in to my interests.

3. You are special to me. The author points out here that this message needs to be paired with us being seen for who we are. Yes, so true. I was seen as special, a genius even, by my mother, but only for superficial achievements such as calendar calculation. I hated this.

4. I respect you. God, this one strikes a chord. The author explains that a parent who sends this message, allows the child to discover and express their unique self rather than having to conform to the parents’ blueprint for them. One particular memory comes up, which isn’t a traumatic memory but is a funny example of the larger scheme of things. When I thought I was a lesbian at age fifteen, I tried to figure out whether my parents would be open to this before coming out. My mother said: “I accept you as you are, even if you turn out to be a conservative.” Well, that said enough: she didn’t accept me as I am.

5. I love you. As the author says, some children hear this multiple times a day, while others go a lifetime without hearing these words. They also need to be felt as sincere. In my case, my mother would often say “I love you” when we’d just had an argument. She was physically affectionate, but it was usually in a ritualized way. Like, I was given a goodnight kiss each night until I was at least twelve. One memory in this respect, happened when I was around eleven. My parents required me to read a certain number of pages of a Braille book. If I didn’t finish them, I could go to bed but without a kiss or any affection. This is probably a relatively minor incident, but it is again a sign of how affection was used generally.

6. Your needs are important to me. You can turn to me for help. This one is a mixed bag. I was helped, yes, sometimes too much so, but I wasn’t taught how to do things on my own. Then once I turned eighteen, my parents expected me to be fully independent. My needs are currently definitely not important to my parents. As I sometimes half-jokingly say, they fed me for eighteen years and then they thought their job was done.

7. I am here for you. I will make time for you. See above. Until I was eighteen, my parents were a relatively consistent presence in my life. They never actually institutionalized me and they’re still together. Then when I turned eighteen, they said I had to take care of myself and more or less vanished. This was clear to me from an early age on, too. As my father at one point told me, a family is like a business, it has to be run efficiently.

8. I’ll keep you safe. I am not sure. This one feels odd on a deep, emotional level. One memory that pops up though, is my parents consistently blaming me for being the victim of bullying. My parents also were pretty much the opposite of helicopter parents. Like I said, they were hardly involved in my life past age eighteen. Not that I care much now, but it feels as though I was hardly protected by my parents. The author says that those who don’t receive this message, feel small and unable to explore the world. Yes!

9. You can rest in me. I’m not sure. I don’t understand this message really. It conveys feeling at home with your parents. Definitely not. However, I don’t feel like I can be at home with anyone.

10. I delight in you. This one is mostly conveyed in non-verbal ways, of which I’m not aware due to being blind. As a result, I’m not sure of this one.