Abusive Dad

Private c wrote: »

Growing up with an abusive dad, how has that affected you in later life. I am sort of realising the way I am now is because I grew up with one. My childhood consisted of sitting at the top of the stairs in tears while my mum was battered.

That only stopped when I grew up and was big enough that I got involved and stopped it.

It has, I reckon affected my relationship with adults and maybe trust issues. Have you ever resolved this?

It will affect you - it is almost inevitable.

Children need to feel safe, and abusive parents are the opposite of safe. That can happen even in the absence of physical violence, but violence makes the experience of childhood far worse. Children also need home lives that from their point of view are reliable, predictable and rational. A child who doesn't feel safe or who has endured disordered, unreliable or unstructured parenting is very likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder, to have problems trusting people and to have difficulty forming secure attachments and relationships.

Those kind of adverse childhood experiences impact on different people in different ways because no two children are the same (and no two parents are the same). They also impact in different ways at different times in a person's life. Abuse and neglect by fathers has a different impact on sons and on daughters, and the effects will play out in different ways as the child grows up and goes through life experiences.

The other curse of PTSD is that it makes it very hard to leave stress, fear and negativity in the past. It's not a case of "pulling yourself together" or just "getting over things". Unfortunately it just ain't that simple.

In short, the kind of experience you describe leads to unhappiness, to PTSD, and to mistrust. It also makes it hard to build the kind of ordered, reliable, rational life one might like. That's not really a surprise. Who can blame someone for being unhappy or mistrustful, or for having trouble building and managing relationships if they've spent a lot of their formative and vulnerable years living in stress and fear?

Having said all that, PTSD is also something that people can learn to manage, to improve, to keep at bay and to fix. It takes work, and time, and it's not easy to do it by yourself. But it can be done.

The other thing is that the earlier a person starts, the sooner they can make progress, and the longer they can spend getting the benefits of feeling better in themselves.

The one thing I'd recommend - I think most people would - is to talk with someone. It is up to you who that someone should be in your own circumstances, but for most people an independent counsellor of some kind is the best option. Friends and family mean well, but they aren't professionally trained and it can be hard for them to see the wood for the trees.

TL;DR - what you say sounds sadly familiar, the hurt you feel makes sense, you can recover and resolve, it's not easy but it is doable, and talking to someone else will help.

That's really all I can say, other than to say as a stranger that I am so sorry to read what you've had to endure, and to wish you well.

Tabhair aire duit féin.