What Has Helped Me Thus Far

For a long time now, I've struggled with an off-and-on depression and anger that continuously gnaws at me. I attribute this anger and depression partly to the abuse I experienced at the hands of my siblings and partly to the helplessness brought on by my parents' failure to protect me. Sometimes I feel resentful at the resentment itself because it took away a lot of the good parts of my life. I entered my late adolescence and young adulthood not as a joyous, carefree young person, but as a very angry and closed off woman who spent a lot of time being angry at the world, walking around wanting to kill someone. 

Sometimes I would ask myself if this angry cloud would ever lift and I would see the sun again. Because every once in a while I would ask myself, "What if I feel like this for the rest of my life? Will I just be this angry for good?" 

I'm finding more and more that the answer is no. 

Within the past few months, I've noticed some changes within me. I don't feel angry as frequently anymore. And while there are still times when I lock myself in my room and beat the shit out of my mattress, those times don't happen as often as they used to. I was thinking about this recently and asking myself why this is. So I sat down and thought about it and came up with a list of reasons why.

This is what I think has helped me:

Time and Distance: Just getting away from my siblings for a while helped to clear some smoke out of the skies. I'd heard that "time heals all wounds" and I didn't want to believe it, because I thought that nothing as simple as "time" should be allowed to pardon my siblings. But the thing is. . .it did. And I'm glad that it did. Distance as well. I think that distance even more so than time can help heal wounds. Moving out of the house and limiting my contact with my siblings erased some of the painful memories. Distance can also be emotional as well as geographical. I cut off relationships with the two guilty siblings and that was a signal to them that I was punishing them for what they did. 

Expressing my feelings--but not to the guilty parties--was also a big help. In my teen years I wasted my time with a dumbass therapist who told me that all I needed to do was stand up for myself and that would be it. I would make my siblings treat me respectfully and I would no longer be in pain. Bullshit. Looking back, I can see now that I shouldn't have pressured myself so much about "standing up" to the oppressors, because it wouldn't have done anything. But what would have helped me would have been talking to supportive people (not my therapist) about how I was feeling. Whenever my friends sympathetically listened to me and offered support and encouragement, I felt at least ten times lighter. I know someone who also went through a difficult time as a child, and she told me one of the most helpful things she did was just getting all her feelings out, and talking about it. 

Learning about others' experiences: When I heard others' stories about dealing with abusive siblings and parents who were no help, this also helped to lighten my load. Not in a Schadenfraude type of way, but in an "I'm not alone" type of way. Witnessing many different types of people who have gone through these experiences, I learned that I was not to blame for what happened. I also learned that other people were also shouldering big emotional burdens, and this perspective helped to lighten my load in a weird way. 

Empowering myself: Something that I have noticed over and over again: my anger goes away when my helplessness goes away. Whenever I was able to do something that put power back in my own hands, I felt a lot better. This isn't always possible, but when you can find something you can control, take advantage of it. For me, empowering myself meant accepting the fact that my parents and I weren't going to see eye-to-eye about me attending my sibling's wedding, and not to waste time getting angry over them. It meant trusting my own common sense and judgment when I heard an adult using the "it takes two to tango" line in a situation that very clearly involved a guilty party. It meant many different things to me, and I encourage you to find what empowering yourself means to you. 

Fighting back: The few times I did it, I did think that giving my siblings a taste of their own medicine was helpful to me. It reaffirmed that what they did was unacceptable when I saw their reactions. It got rid of some of my anger. And it educated them on why I was mad at them. You can choose whether or not you want to do this. Some mental health experts would say not to. But in my opinion, giving bullies a taste of their own medicine is not necessarily a bad idea.

This blog: Writing a blog is a unique experience. When I kept a diary and recorded my thoughts there, it didn't help me because I felt like I was internalizing my feelings even more. But with a blog I get to write my thoughts publicly, and share them with other people who have had similar experiences. I get to give an issue a public voice, and hopefully educate people a little bit more about this issue. I get to get a conversation going. I get to offer others a chance to share their own personal stories if they desire. This blog has been empowering and has been a public track record of my growth through dealing with this horrible trauma. And I hope learning about my experiences has been empowering for you as well.

I also would like to share with you some things that don't help, and they are:
-anything that makes you feel more helpless
-invalidation (from friends who judge your feelings)
-not expressing your feelings; keeping everything inside

I hope that in time, you will find peace and get rid of the horrible monsters still plaguing you. You deserve to be happy, and I can tell you that in time you will also find the clouds are lifting. 

Why We Don't Talk about It

When I was a teenager, I was facing the worst emotional crisis I had ever faced in my life and (if my prediction comes true) probably ever will. I felt depressed, angry and helpless 90% of the time and just wanted to cut myself off from my family for good. The worst part of it was the fact that I felt like I was all alone in the world. I didn't talk about my problems to a single soul, and even though I desperately wanted help it felt like there was no one out there to help me. I just wasn't close to my friends, and I didn't think I could tell them about what was going on at home. I didn't know who I could turn to. So I suffered in silence, too afraid to come out of the closet about the fact that I was hurting very, very badly.

Right now I am slowly working my way out of what (I hope) was the darkest period in my life. But even now there are plenty of times where I feel very angry and sad, and I don't know what to do about it. So I started reflecting about my situation, and a thought occurred to me. What if I were to just . . .let it out? Tell someone? Not wait around for the right person to present themselves to me, but just let my problems out to someone I knew?

So I thought about that for a while, and then decided that I would reveal a little bit of my story to my friend, Rebecca during one of our get-togethers. Well, she and I spent a day in a park together, just walking around and chatting about random topics. Rebecca is a good friend of mine, and while we're not extremely close, her kindness has shown me that I can trust her to reveal some of the issues I've dealt with.

Well, we were chatting and walking and walking and chatting and . . . I never told her. Anything. I didn't let the tiniest sliver of my story come out to her.

Why did that happen? Why didn't I tell her anything? Why is it so hard to talk about our issues?

I think there are a few reasons why:

1. We're afraid of criticism: I've talked about my past to people in my life before, and sometimes they have been very critical of the things I've said. When we're expressing feelings like "I hate my sister!!," others often want to react with something along the lines of, "Don't say that! That's terrible!" Such invalidation shuts us up and makes us think resentfully to ourselves, You know what?! You'd be saying the EXACT SAME THING if she was your sibling! Better to not talk about it at all.  
2. People are condescending: Putting yourself in a vulnerable position can give the person you are speaking to a chance to give themselves a power trip. Even if she seems like she's being nice, often what comes out of Miss Condescension's mouth is a put-down in disguise. "Oh sweetie," she'll say, "All siblings fight with each other. Just don't let it bother you so much." Being treated like you're five years old and having someone downplay your problems is tough to handle. And this brings me to my third point. . .
3. People just don't get it:  "Oh but that's normal," is the common response from people we've talked about our experiences with. They don't understand that what happened to us was unacceptable, inexcusable, and has left lasting scars. Sometimes people think we're trying to bring the conversation around to birth order. We fear they'll respond to our problems with, "But what about all the shit that younger siblings do?" Or they'll turn the conversation back to themselves and say, "Well, I was the oldest child, and I had it really tough...." another topic that really, really irritates us.
4. We don't want to make others uncomfortable: What we've been through has not been pretty. This is especially true for survivors of physical and sexual abuse, but even stories about emotional abuse can make others cringe. We don't want our friends to be stuck in an awkward position where they don't know how to respond to something we've told them. So instead, we keep quiet.
5. We feel uncomfortable: Feeling vulnerable does not feel good to us. We don't want to seem weak to others or to ourselves. Hearing our emotions expressed out loud makes them very real for us, while previously we'd been able to pretend that they didn't exist. Reliving situations where a sibling humiliated you or beat you up, especially out loud, is not a pleasant experience. We would rather give help to others than be on the receiving end of help from others. To us, revealing our problems feels like we're making ourselves weaker.

Every once in a while I ask myself if I have any regrets about my experience with sibling abuse. To be honest, I don't really think I do. I don't think fighting back harder would have made a difference. I don't think explaining it to my parents would have made a difference. I don't think that anything I could have done would have stopped the abuse itself.

But I think that there's something I do regret. I regret not opening up about my feelings to the people in my life. I think my teenage years would have been ten times better had I talked to my friends about what I was going through. I can hear sixteen-year-old me saying, "Ha! Easier said than done!" And maybe that's true. But I used to think that a close friendship was something that happened to you, and now I see that it's something you create. I used to think you needed to wait for the right friend to come along for you to finally divulge deeper parts of yourself. But you don't, really. You don't need the absolute right moment to tell people how you're feeling--you just need a good enough moment.

The exception I think is with physical or sexual abuse. In those cases, in my opinion, you do need the right moment to finally reveal that information. And I think that moment can come along. I had a good friend reveal to me that she experienced physical abuse at the hands of an older sibling. In turn, I revealed to her some of my story. And it was a good experience for both of us.

Looking back, I realize that the only time I ever came out of the closet to someone was when they had revealed some of their personal struggles to me first. Hearing someone else's story made me feel safe to reveal mine, because I knew that they wouldn't criticize, belittle or judge me. And it makes me wonder how many other friends I had like me, who were waiting to reveal their story but wanted someone else to go first so that they could feel safe.

So I have a dare for you. Wait for a good enough moment, and then reveal at least part of your story to a friend of yours. Go first.  

My Reply to a Misguided Mom

Here is a note I found on this website titled "When Should I Intervene During Teasing?"

My 13-year-old son is constantly teasing his younger brother, who is 10. I never know when to intervene. On the one hand, I want to let them work it out themselves. On the other, I worry that my older son is going to think it's OK to be mean and my younger son is going to have some lasting emotional scars. What do I do?
- Janet

And here is my response:

Dear Janet,

You're a good mom. It sounds like you're involved in your kids' lives, and want the best for them. You want to do what's right and you follow the advice from experts, parenting books, and most likely the people in your life: children should be left alone to "work it out themselves."

But here's the thing: "Working it out themselves" is something that applies to your kids' conflicts with each other. If your sons are fighting about what to watch on T.V, or who stole whose skates and broke them, or which video game they want to play together, then they can be left alone to work it out themselves.

During a teasing situation, children should not be left alone to handle it. While conflicts can be dealt with by compromising, teasing is very different. In this situation, there's nothing to really "work out." We're dealing with misbehavior here. And when a child misbehaves, it is a parent's duty to step in.

Telling a teaser and a victim to "work it out themselves" is like telling a child running around a restaurant screaming his head off to "work it out himself." The restaurant-screaming child is not going to stop until an adult steps in and punishes him for misbehaving. The same goes for the teasing child.

You are absolutely right that your older son is learning that it's OK to be mean. The fact that you are worried and the fact that you wrote this letter both tell me that your intuition has given you the answer here. You know already that it's time for you to intervene.

And when do you intervene during teasing? If the teasing is constant, if it's meant to embarrass or dominate the victim, if one child is always teasing and the other always being teased, then you must step in and hold the aggressor accountable. You're worried that there's some sort of acceptable limit for teasing, and you shouldn't intervene until the teasing has surpassed that limit. What all parents should know is that the threshold is a lot closer than they think. If you can say "teasing is present in my house," then chances are the limit has already been reached.

Try your best to stamp out the teasing and let your older son know his power to be compassionate. Then it will no longer be necessary to intervene

Sincerely,

Spunky Sybil