Opening Up About My Trauma

Posted on by Astrid

Last Monday, I was going for a walk with my one-on-one for the moment when we saw a few clients and staff she knew (she’s a temp worker). She wanted to “say a quick hi”. That turned into a fifteen-minute conversation between her and one of the other staff, which eventually turned to clients with severe challenging behavior being taken on outings off grounds and then, when they act out, staff being filmed by bystanders when restraining the client. This discussion triggered me, because it led to flashbacks of the times I’ve been “guided” (as staff call it) to my room. More like physically moved by several staff at a time, and the fact that I wasn’t officially restrained (because that probably only counts when you’re pinned down to the ground), is solely due to my lack of physical strength.

I asked the staff, admittedly more curtly than I should have, to not have these discussions in my presence in the future, as it was triggering me. She told me I was making it all about me and if I wanted to offer an opinion I should’ve made sure I listened to the whole thing because now I was twisting the truth. I told her about the time I was shoved to my room and staff threatened to lock me up in there. “You probably deserved it,” was her response.

This led to a whole chain reaction of triggers, in which I started to doubt the validity of my trauma-related symptoms. Didn’t I deserve the harsh punishments my parents gave me? I know at least back in my day an “educational spanking” was legal. In some U.S. states, child abuse isn’t even child abuse if it’s used as punishment.

I can’t go into the details of the punishments I endured as a child, and I’m pretty sure they’re not necessarily illegal. Does that mean they can’t have caused me PTSD?

That evening though, I was having intense flashbacks and decided to open up to my staff for that moment. She happened to be one of the staff who’d shoved me to my room on Friday and threatened to lock me in there. I had to admit – even though I don’t believe it – that I deserved to be physically moved to my room. I mean, the reason was my dropping the F-bomb while in the communal room (and then refusing to go to my room on my own when told to), which, well, truthfully staff do all the time.

After I’d given examples of the way my parents treated me, my staff seemed quite shocked. I honestly don’t understand this, as she restrains clients everyday and never even cares about the impact this has on them. I mean, I know, staff restraining clients is legal, but then again does something have to be illegal to be traumatic? And if so, where’s the boundary between an “educational spanking” and child abuse? Or does it have to be unwarranted? In that case, I must say, my parents acted out of a need to show who’s boss because they’d felt powerless over my behavior. I did, indeed, try to excuse my parents’ actions by explaining about my own behavior. The staff didn’t seem impressed.

I know, in my heart, that the truth is that restraints can and do traumatize clients too. I know I experienced trauma while in the psychiatric hospital because of being locked up in seclusion against my will. I know I still experience emotional trauma. And, of course, I’m more sensitive to this due to the trauma I endured as a child. But it isn’t black-or-white. And this is confusing.

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.