Dear Yuhan:

I too suffered in childhood and wanted to die. My mother mistreated me, she did the beating, not with “solid wood”, she used her hands and feet to slap, hit and kick me. And she used words, humiliating words that shamed me deeply. I too thought I was at fault, having “fatal flaws”. And I too tried to “understand where (she) came from”.

I didn’t understand at the time that understanding where she came from was not going to change the damage done by the verbal and physical beatings. It couldn’t possibly make it retroactively okay, saying to myself something like: it doesn’t hurt anymore, the memory of those  words  because now I understand that she had a tough childhood, that she suffered abuse, that she was  in pain.

All that trying to understand her did for me was to focus on her, as if I  was not important.

I believed there was  something terribly wrong  with me, so I accepted mistreatment by others, as an adult. I didn’t know anything different, being treated with respect… I had a couple of experiences of that, and it felt so strange.. but didn’t have enough of it.

For example, as a child, an uncle asked me a question as if I mattered. It seemed like he was waiting for my answer with interest and curiosity. How strange that was/

I too had  some happy experiences in childhood. My mother and other people accused me for remembering only  the bad, and I  felt guilty for that. Only  later, much later, did I realize that I remembered the bad so vividly, not because I had the .. fatal flaw of remembering  the  negative, but because it is natural to focus on the negative. For example, a deer is pleasantly eating grass, then it  hears a noise, could be an approaching predator, some danger (something negative). It immediately stops eating and focuses  on the danger until it passes.

Animals are geared to focus on danger/ the negative so to survive.

It was not your fault that you got sick. It was your father fault that he  beat you up and it is your mother’s fault for not protecting you, for running away (as if she was afraid that he will beat her up too?). It was not your fault that your ex boyfriend lied to you. You are responsible for staying with him, not for his behavior.

anita