Well, shit. (content warning: parental abuse)

[ForbiddenFruit]

'Sup. Long time no see. I poke my head in at goings-on every couple days. I'm usually happy just to lurk. But, uh. Fuck, man. I gotta let it out.

I've been going to therapy for a number of months now - there is no singular reason, it's more that 'the subject is me' and it gives me support and skills. Very slowly, some of my defense mechanisms got chipped away at, and my resilience to being able to talk about a few subjects got built up over time. The more I attended, the more I felt I was able to talk about my parents.

For some time, I was talking about some difficulties I was having with a relationship I was going through. I wasn't comfortable with my partner's neediness, felt we were incompatible, and ended it, but I felt like it was some failing on my part to have this aversion to neediness. Now, my therapist's wicked smart. She's incredible at picking up on things I say and teasing it out from there. She gets me and I'm lucky to be working with her. She caught on to this thread and recommended I do some reading about Attachment Styles and take an interview about it. I accepted and did it about a month ago.

Congratulations, It's A Fearful-Avoidant. Yay. High on anxiety, high on avoidance. The type most prone to involvement in abusive relationships. The embodiment of 'come here and go away'. Desperately craving closeness, but convinced that getting close results in getting hurt. Hoorah. Sound the celebratory trumpets. It's official: I'm A Mess.

A lot of the interview process is based on recounting earlier memories and your relationship with your parents. So...a lot of stuff comes out. Some of it from when I was a child, some into later teen years, and I had to bring up something that happened when I was 21 that I felt was important to damaging some of my trust. And...like...I thought all of the stuff I recounted was just normal?

I'd just never paused to consider the notion that my recurring vivid memories were a non-normative experience. I just thought that 'oh, of course you'd remember the time shoes were thrown at you while you were screamed at, or the time you were shoved against a hard plastic prop on the floor in public as a child, or the time your mother spun you by the wrist and threw you onto the curb as a teenager; of course it's normal to think about these things every couple of weeks. It's just like remembering an awkward social faux pas you did, right?' (which is itself predicated on the idea that it's 'normal' to routinely remember social faux pas from more than a decade ago; whaddya know it turns out shame is a huge part of my emotional landscape, hmmm).

I just always thought 'nah, I can't be traumatised. If I was, I'd know about it, wouldn't I? Besides, I was never ritualistically, routinely or predictably beaten, so it doesn't count. And on all those random occasions where my parents did hit me, I definitely deserved it. It's my fault for sighing or rolling my eyes. They make my bed and let me live with them so by definition these things were okay. It's normal that my heart rate goes up and my muscles stiffen when I hear them walking around, or when I am confronted by anyone in a position of authority over me. My issues with doubting myself and never giving myself credit for anything I do has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that my father blames me for my mother having a stroke.'

Really makes it clear how fucked it is when someone else writes it out, doesn't it?

That was the first time that someone else, to my face, referred to these things, these things that were done to me by people that I still live with, as instances of abuse. It was the first time I tried using that word either, instead of awkwardly saying 'things that happened to me growing up' or 'my 21st', or 'things that hurt me' etc. And, just...fuck, healing stings, doesn't it?

I, honestly just...feel really insecure about everything now.

I have had a particular mistrust of my parents for the last 6 years or so following Some Shit That Hurt Me on my 21st birthday and since then I'd kind of prided myself, internally, on the notion of not being affected by it. I wanted, and continue to want, to be Better Than Them, to be Not Like Them. And now I gotta face up to it: stuff they did to me has made me what I am. It's a part of why I have difficulties starting and maintaining relationships healthily, why I either just fret and seek reassurance, or just lock up and ghost. It's part of why violence enters my emotional landscape so much. It's part of why I just bundle up my feelings until it explodes and turns everyone else into collateral. The people who hurt me made me who I am and I hate myself.

Ditto this for being trans, and into ABDL / CGl.

I felt like I had some sense of security in the notion that I was trans and into kink without being a traumatised person. 'I'm trans because I'm trans. End of fucking discussion.' 'I'm kinky and it's a healthy dynamic. It doesn't reflect anything.'

And now I feel like I've handed a loaded gun to every single shithead on the planet. People who believe I'm trans because of shit that happened to me now have the evidence they desperately crave. Now I'm really 'a failed confused soyboy beta male' that Barry Shitpeas thinks I am (just an aside: if you believe this invalidates trans people, please deepthroat a shotgun). Again, ditto that for the fetishes. I've been handed a burning log of self-doubt to beat myself with.

Just...fuck.

Turns out I did suffer abuse growing up, and its shades continue.

And I don't know where that leaves me.

[WBDaddy]

100% empathy here. 

I too suffered verbal and physical abuse for the first 12 years of my life, until I was finally big enough to physically stop my abuser.  And it was a long, hard road of cognitive-behavioral therapy, one that carried into my early 40's, to finally heal from it.  

But, in retrospect, it didn't need to take that long.  Unraveling that ball of yarn will only happen one tangle at a time - think about a trigger response you have, work through it with your therapist, discover what the source is - specific memories/traumas/etc that are its source.  Understand those things, embrace the fact that it was not your fault that they happened, and that they cannot hurt you now unless you let them. 

Also, cut off contact with your abusers, if you haven't already.  People like that rarely stop, they just evolve their tactics into manipulation and emotional abuse once they can no longer hurt you physically.