Grief As It Relates to Childhood Trauma: Missing Something You Never Had #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone and welcome to my letter G post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today, I want to talk about grief as it affects survivors of childhood trauma and particularly family dysfunction. I discussed grief in last year’s A-to-Z too. The thing is though, for many survivors of family dysfunction, the grief is not related to loss, but to missing something you never had. After all, for most people growing up in dysfunctional families, the abuse and neglect started before they were old enough to form clear memories. Because of this as well as other factors, many children also grow up to believe their experience is normal. After all, if you’ve never known any different, it’s hard to understand that your experience could be traumatic. This is one reason way too many people still believe that adversity experienced in early childhood has few effects because “they won’t remember anyway”.

I personally greatly struggle with this belief. Like I shared, I quite literally experienced adversity from birth on if not before. As such, even though my parents claim I was a happy child until around age seven, I have very few memories of a happy childhood.

I also struggle with the belief that “it wasn’t that bad” because it was all I knew. This means that, for a long time, I didn’t actually grieve my childhood trauma. This might seem positive, but the grief is all the worse now that I do know that my experiences weren’t normal. Besides, denial is the first stage in grieving for a reason. In other words, not knowing means I’ll never move on either.

Many people who didn’t experience significant childhood trauma, react to those grieving the happy childhood they never had with well-meaning but hurtful comments like “leave the past behind” or “everybody struggles sometimes”. In reality though, I’m not everybody and the past is part of my life.

Family Dynamics: Roles in Dysfunctional Families #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m once again incredibly late writing my contribution for the #AtoZChallenge today. Today’s letter is F and what better word to choose than “family”? After all, with most people who experience complex PTSD as a result of childhood trauma, the trauma originated in the family. This, obviously, does not have to be a birth family, unless you’re talking about the experiences of a traumatic start in life. The traumatic experiences I’m going to talk about here, can affect children brought into the family at any time during childhood.

Often, there are particular dynamics in families in which at least one of the parents is abusive, addicted or otherwise dysfunctional. This is a reason siblings in dysfunctional families often have very different perspectives on their upbringing. In my own case, my sister retreated to her room whenever my parents and I had an argument. As a result, she didn’t see the way my parents reacted and she did hear my screaming. She also resents me for having gotten more attention than she got, even though most of this attention especially when we got older, was negative.

Children and parents/caregivers in dysfunctional families can have many different roles. Some of them, I’ll discuss in more detail later in the challenge. They include:


  • Golden Child: the child who “can’t do wrong”. They are often the family “favorite”, often experiencing being spoiled or having few limits placed on them.

  • Hero: the child who “proves” that there’s nothing wrong with the family. This ties in with the “lost child” role that my sister had: the invisible one.

  • Identified patient / problem child: the child/person being identified as the source of the family’s dysfunction or the reason the family enters therapy. This role shows that, even in families in which one person is clearly the one being obviously abusive, the actual problem is the dynamics within the family.

  • Scapegoat/black sheep: the opposite of the “hero”, the scapegoat is the child blamed for everything going wrong in the family. Usually they get the harshest abuse.

  • Enabler: this is the person, either the not-so-obviously abusive parent or an older child, who maintains the family’s outward appearance and tries to take care of the family at least to an extent.

For clarity’s sake, none of these roles are “good”, in that they all show that a family is dysfunctional. I mean, I was often raised as a mixture between the golden child and identified patient. I regularly tried to deny my golden child attributes, because too often the golden child turns out to become abusive towards their own partner and eventually children. Then again, being the golden child is not that child’s fault. Continuing the cycle once they’re an adult, however, is.

Autonomy: Learning That I Can Do Things and That My Opinions Matter #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today is April 1 so this means the #AtoZChallenge is starting. I haven’t prepared any posts in advance, but since I am going to write on healing past hurts, the concept of autonomy spoke to me for my letter A post. Autonomy is the ability to be self-reliant and independent, both physically and emotionally. It starts to develop in toddlerhood.

As I learned about emotional development as it relates to developmental disability (I discussed this in 2023), I realized in many ways I’m not there yet. I struggle with even basic decisions like what clothes I want to wear.

When I was 30, I was told I have dependent personality disorder. This disorder is characterized by passivity and the inability to make decisions independently, as well as a pervasive need to be taken care of. It is often related to lack of encouragement of autonomy in childhood.

I don’t have many memories of my early childhood, but I do know I wasn’t given a lot of autonomy when I was older. It’s not that my parents didn’t try, but as soon as I got frustrated, they gave up. They genuinely believed they were giving me autonomy and that I was just too stubborn to want to be independent. For this reason, they claimed and to this day still claim it’s my choice to be in the care system.

My psychologist back in 2016, the one who diagnosed me with dependent personality disorder, sided with them. She said I did have the assertiveness to stand up for myself, but wasn’t doing things I was (thought to be) capable of. That’s not what dependent personality disorder is though: lack of confidence in one’s own physical capabilities is but one criterion out of eight. And please note: it’s specified that the reason someone isn’t doing something, is in fact lack of confidence, not lack of skill or motivation. In other words, unwillingness to do things independently that you can do, is not dependent personality disorder, but care misuse.

And for clarity’s sake: I am not and never was misusing care. However, that’s exactly what my psychologist thought I was and according to which presumption she treated me by kicking me out of the mental hospital with virtually no support. She once again didn’t encourage me to develop autonomy. Refusing to help someone who clearly asks for help, contrary to the current idea in mental health services, may be politically useful, but it is not autonomy-supportive.

I am only now, now that I’m nearly forty, learning that I in fact was conditioned by both my parents and the psychiatric hospital to disregard my own opinions. Yes, being able to do things independently, is one aspect of autonomy, but so is the ability to make your own choices. One can hardly exist without the other.

Romantic?

Posted on by Astrid
Daily writing prompt
What’s your definition of romantic?
View all responses

Well, this is an interesting question. One could define romantic as a form of attraction, ie. being in love or having a crush on someone. In that sense, I would say I rarely if ever experience it. I mean, I had childhood crushes, but the reason I called these crushes was more because that’s what everyone else called them. You know, when a girl and a boy hang out, they are almost automatically assumed to be in love. And even when I found out I liked girls more, I still said I was “in love” because everyone my age had a boyfriend or girlfriend.

When I met my now best friend, both of us probably had similar thoughts of what sharing our life was supposed to mean. We now realize we weren’t looking for a romantic partner but for a best friend. So that’s what we are. We are technically still married, but we aren’t in love. Honestly, never were.

Then, “romantic” can refer to an expression of thinking someone is special. In this sense, I am quite romantic. I am a sucker for hearts even though they make my best friend feel slightly uncomfortable now that we’ve clarified to each other that we aren’t in love. In this sense, the feeling of having a crush on someone, for me, is quite different from feeling that they’re special. I must admit I’m still figuring these things out though.

Flash Fiction: Of Fish and Tape (Or Horses and Receipts)

Posted on by Astrid

A fish swam in the ocean with a roll of sticky tape in its mouth. It was a copycat really, because it learned to carry something in its mouth from the stick horse a little girl once created for her teacher’s St. Nicholas surprise. The attached poem read
A wooden horse
Without a tail
Flew quickly towards the sun
With in its mouth a receipt
Of an already-eaten cake.

That poem was better in Dutch, as the girl was me, but it was still silly. At least it rhymed in its original Dutch version.

The fish didn’t know this, of course. Its picture had been drawn or otherwise created some 30 years after the girl’s original poem. And even if the fish knew, it didn’t care.

I do wonder though, isn’t a roll of sticky tape far too large for a goldfish? It will know very soon. Or not.

This piece of silliness was written for Simply 6 Minutes. It’s 148 words. My original poem was:
Een houten paard
Zonder staart
Vloog pijlsnel naar de zon
Met in zijn mond een kassabon
Van een opgegeten taart

Neurospicy Burnout

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. A few days ago, I listened to a podcast episode on autistic burnout. It’s the most recent episode of Beyond Chronic Burnout, a podcast for autistic women (and other marginalized genders, I hope) and their helping professionals. It discussed the Spicy Pepper burnout questionnaire, which apparently is a questionnaire to determine your level of burnout. I got overloaded trying to find the actual questionnaire amid all the ads etc. and it looks like the website it was published on, isn’t particularly screen reader friendly, so I wasn’t able to take the test. However, from the descriptions discussed on the podcast, I believe I’m in quite a significant burnout and have been for, well, years.

What is autistic burnout, you might ask? Autistic burnout is like regular burnout from being overworked, but it is really more like being overworked living life in a world not designed for autistics. As I have said for many, many years, just living in a neurotypical world is hard work for me.

I want to clarify that autistic burnout is often amplified by co-occuring conditions such as ADHD. In fact, writing this just reminds me of something I read several years ago that said that having fibromyalgia, which is often agravated by stress, is often correlated to ADHD. This is why I refer to neurospicy burnout.

The podcaster claimed that the first signs of burnout in autistics usually appear between the ages of four and six and many autistics experience their first actual burnout between the ages of six and ten. This was hugely validating. I, at age five, fell ill with what my parents claim was the flu, but it did lead them to get me into special ed quicker than originally intended. Age seven is always when my parents claim I changed from a cheerful, happy child to angry and depressed. This correlates with my having to start learning Braille, so according to my parents I then became aware of my declining vision. This is probably correct, but it doesn’t mean that my difficulty accepting my blindness was the only or main problem.

The first warning sign of autistic burnout, the podcaster says, is suicidal ideation. Oh my, can I relate! I honestly always thought that the first sign of burnout, whether neurospicy or work-related, was exhaustion. That with the fact that I react to overload with overactivity and irritability, always made me believe I’ve never had “real” burnout symptoms. Now I realize that I may not have fully collapsed (yet), but I do certainly experience burnout. And have for, well, my entire life since I was seven, I guess.

Kymber’s Get to Know You (January 9, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I have been quite tired over the past few days, so didn’t do much writing. I’m still proud to say that this is my sixth blog post in January. Considering that some months in 2024, I only published five posts total, this is good.

Anyway, regular readers may remember me participating in the Wednesday Hodgepodge for a while. I stopped doing that, because I didn’t like it that the overwhelming majority of participants’ posts were heavily Christian-based. Now though, I seem to have found something to replace it with: Kymber’s Get to Know You. Here are the questions for this week and my answers.

1. What is the most memorable activity you did with your family as a child?
Not an activity we did as a whole family, but play-based learning with my parents comes to mind. For example, my father taught me to calculate squares using computer chips he’d been removing out of the devices himself. I also remember us looking at maps together. My mother also made little books in large print for me to learn to read when I was about four. Here in the Netherlands, children don’t usually learn to read until they’re six, but I was a precocious learner. My parents will probably be proud to see me list these “intellectual” activities.

2. What quality do you appreciate most in a friend?
Acceptance. I want to be myself with a friend and if they aren’t willing to accept that, fine but they aren’t my friend. I will also accept my friends for who they are. I don’t mean that mutual annoyances can’t happen. They happen between me and my spouse, who I consider to be my best friend, all the time. However, when it comes down to it, we accept each other for who we are.

3. What is one characteristic you received from your parents you want to keep and one you wish you could change?
My mother jokes that I inherited all my positive qualities from my father and all my negative ones from her. I was almost going along with it, because indeed the first positive characteristic I thought of comes from my Dad and the first negative one from my Mom. However, I’d like to boost my Mom’s self-esteem a bit (should she ever read this) and lessen my Dad’s. Therefore, I’d like to keep my Mom’s creativity and get rid of my Dad’s snobbishness.

Behind My Anger #SoCS

Posted on by Astrid

SoCS Badge 2019-2020

Many people think I’m angry a lot. It was written in my reports from psychologists as early as age 8 and maybe even younger. I do sound angry sometimes, but behind that anger are many other emotions. I mean, I rarely feel genuinely angry, but I express many strong emotions as rage, irritability or other forms of anger.

I don’t blame other people for not seeing it. I see anger a lot when others claim there isn’t any. But it’s hard for me to look beyond (my perceptions of) people’s surface expressions. When it feels as though an angry person stands in front of me, or worse yet, behind me, I shrink inwardly, but react outwardly. This is really hard for others to comprehend, but I have the same feelings as everybody else. So do you, even if it appears I only see anger. We all need to look beyond what seems to be in front of us.

This post was written for Stream of Consciousness Saturday, for which the prompt today is “in front” and/or “behind”. Linda’s also doing #JusJoJan again, which stands for Just Jot It! January. I will write a post when the prompt appeals to me, but I do really hope to be blogging regularly this month (and the rest of 2025).

Parenting Advice From a Childfree Survivor of Childhood Trauma

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today’s RagTag Daily Prompt is “parenting”. Since I’m currently recovering from meeting my parents for my birthday, I’m going to make a list of parenting advice my parents should’ve received. I realize their inability to love me unconditionally wasn’t unwillingness. In fact, the fear that I may have this same inability is one reason I’m childfree. This post is a random list and may come across a bit harsh, but so be it.

1. A family is not a business. It doesn’t have to be run efficiently. Yes, I understand you get impatient with your child’s struggles at times, but this isn’t their problem – it’s yours.

I was constantly shamed for needing too much help and my parents gave up on teaching me basic skills of daily living because I got frustrated and the task didn’t get done efficiently.

2. Challenging behavior does not make the child (especially young child) bad or manipulative. Behavior is communication, yes, but to search for hidden motives behind it, is actually quite arrogant.

I was told by my parents that, by age seven, I had come up with some idea to manipulate everyone into thinking I was different in all kinds of other ways besides blind because I didn’t accept my blindness. News flash: I am those other things.

3. Children are incredibly loyal to authority figures, be it their parents, teachers, or others. When you fight the school or healthcare system over something rather than trying to be cooperative, the child will experience a conflict of loyalty. This means that, just because they side with you eventually, it isn’t necessarily in their best interest.

My parents were constantly fighting the school over my needs, because the school denied my intelligence. Then again, my parents minimized my emotional difficulties. When an educational psychologist who saw both my intelligence and my emotional issues, nonetheless advised special education for me, my parents still weren’t happy even though they’d chosen this ed psych, because they were dead set on me being mainstreamed.

4. Your child is not an extension of your ego. For this reason, they do not have to follow an educational or career path you like. It isn’t their job to make up for your lost dreams.

See also above. From the time I was a young child on, it was clear that, by age eighteen, I’d live on my own and go to university. Interestingly, neither of my parents have a college degree and particularly my mother feels “dumb” for it even though she worked herself up to a management position that usually requires a college degree.

5. Your child doesn’t need to prove their value. They do not need to prove they were “worth raising” by being anything, be it independent, successful, or whatever. If you don’t want a disabled child, a child of a certain gender, or whatever, you shouldn’t have a child.

I have probably said this before, but my parents, particularly my father, seriously think that a child needs to prove they were worth raising by being successful in life as an adult. He didn’t mean me when he said this, “because you’re training for independent living”. Well, now that I’m in an institution with seven hours of one-on-one a day, he obviously does mean me, since the few times I’ve seen him since he’s barely acknowledged me.

6. Love your child unconditionally. This does not mean agreeing with every single decision they make, but it does mean being there for them when they need you. And this doesn’t end when they turn 21. With a few exceptions (an adult child becoming a criminal, for example), parenting is a lifelong commitment.

I am linking this post up with #WWWhimsy as well.

Vignettes About Unicorns

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today I’m joining Writer’s Workshop. One of the prompts is to share at least five moments of your life (not events, but merely vignettes) that are somehow related. I, for some reason, was immediately drawn to the theme of unicorns. Let’s see what I can come up with.

1. I remember having a unicorn My Little Pony figurine as a child. In fact, that’s a lie, as I think it was my sister’s, but I loved her anyway. In my memory, she was light purple, but I could’ve misremembered that, since my favorite color is lilac.

2. Last October (I think), I got a unicorn soft toy from my spouse as a thank-you gift for my support throughout our relationship and particularly over the past several months.

3. The other two unicorn soft toys on my bed, I bought at the fall fair here on institution grounds last October too.

4. Which reminds me, I have a lonely unicorn soft toy sitting in the soft toy cabinet. I got that one for Christmas at the last day center I attended while living with my spouse.

5. Oh wait, no, I have another unicorn soft toy in the cabinet. I got that one when leaving the care facility in Raalte for the intensive support home. Oh, how I miss being in Raalte still.

6. Now enough with the soft toys. The first unicorn I created, in July of 2021, I did entirely from a YouTube tutorial. I gave it to my spouse, who probably still has it.

7. I remember crafting my first unicorn at the intensive support home with my assigned staff. It didn’t turn out as good as I’d liked, but it was okay.

8. I gifted her my best unicorn I created while there when I left. Too bad she ignores me now…

9. When I left the intensive support home, I gifted each of my fellow residents a small cutter-created polymer clay unicorn.

10. I used for it a cutter I’d gotten for my birthday last year from my parents. My spouse had also gifted me unicorn-themed cutters at some point, which I originally intended to use.

11. I read my first unicorn-themed book a few years ago. That is, I probably read some in childhood too but not sure since they weren’t as popular as they are now. The book was a short picture book called First Day of Unicorn School.

12. My current unicorn-related read is the second book in the Unicorn Academy series by Julie Sykes. Oh wait, that’s not exactly a memory I’m sharing…

13. I can’t remember when I started calling my spouse “head unicorn catcher”. The reason is the fact that my spouse’s truck route is named after a city which has the unicorn as its symbol. Oh wait, that wasn’t really a memory either.

But I got to thirteen. So I’m allowed to share this post with Thursday Thirteen too. So if my post doesn’t meet the criteria for Writer’s Workshop, at least it meets the criteria for that.