Freedomain Radio

I can't remember much about my childhood.  I know that occassionally I was spanked.  Maybe 4 or 5 times, its hard to say.  I had my mouth washed out with soap once.  I never resisted, not once.  I never fought back, I never made trouble.  I just took it, and that was that.  They never needed to use violence.  Or if they did use violence to break my will at one point or another, I don't remember it.  

What I do remember is Fear.  With a capital F.  My father was, is, an incredible bully.  His violence was verbal.  He could pile up so much of it into the inflection of his voice that it was scary.  Especially since most of the time he played the soft-spoken, funny old man bit.   What made it worse was that he was a cripple.  He had some kind of back or knee problems when he was born.   So he walked with an odd gait, rather stiffly.  He couldn't run at all.  But when he wanted to get up in your face and yell at you, he could move fast.  

When he screamed at me, I feared death.  The thing I wanted most in the world was for him to stop and go away.  Make myself small enough that I wouldn't bother him.  

I can remember when I was in my teens and we got a dog, that he would discipline the dog with that voice.  He wouldn't be angry with the dog, but he would use his angry voice with it.  It gave me....not exactly flashbacks, but it brought the fear back up.   But this time I feared for the dog as well as myself.  I was always afraid he'd kick it and hurt it after he screamed at it.  But he was always calm afterwards.  

Listening to 1125 put a lot of that in perspective, it brought a lot of it back.  

It made me realize that I still fear death from my parents.  I'm afraid that they'll find me somehow and get me somehow.  I've had daymares of drive-by shootings walking home from work.  My dad has quite a collection of guns.

 Its not an ever-present fear of death.  But it still pops up from time to time.   Even after I've defoo'ed. 

This podcast was enormously helpful.

Thank you Stef, and all participants. 

Thank you greatly for sharing your experience. Your childhood sounds horrifically violent and threatening and i am very sorry to hear you grew up in that environment. Have you been seeking therapy by any chance?

I want to go to therapy, I actually was able to afford one appointment.  But right now I need to pay off some of my credit card debt first before I can go on a regular schedule.  Moving cost a lot more money than I had.  =  /  

I was amazed listening to this and 1124.

Just last week in therapy we talked about a difficult conversation I had to have (work-related) and how scared I was of having it.

The jist is that I had to tell somebody that I want to stop working with him.  He's been very controlling and we've found some parallels with him and my mom in ways that I don't think we've fully figured out yet.  Or you might say my relationship and perception of him is a bit fishy.

Anyway, I got all psyched up to call and tell him one day, but I couldn't do it.  I decided that it was time, and it had to be done that day.  I basically wasted the day and got nothing done - not even the phone call.

2 days later I decided to go for it again.  I saw the initial post in this thread about taking action, and I was a bit inspired.  After hearing the podcast a few days later, it was kind of funny how appropriate the topic was... but that's a different story.

So I lied down on my bed and tried to give all of my fears a voice.  I said "I'm afraid he'll do X, Y, Z".  And, "most likely he'll do A, B, C".  None of the possibilites included physical violence by the way, and my parents did not beat me - they might have "spanked" me once but I don't remember or even know.  Mom was depressed though.

The amazing thing was that I was physically humming.  I don't know how to explain it other than that my body was really really revved up.  I was full of adrenaline and tingling through this self-conversation.  The point of all this:  I noticed that I was as scared as I'd be if I thought I could die.  I felt the same as I've felt before doing something very physically dangerous (and possibly stupid).  Same feeling of anticipation and knowing that if things didn't go well I could die.  I felt a ton of nervousness in my stomach, and I'd heard that you can tense your abdominals for 10 seconds or something to get rid of that feeling.  So I tried that with minor results, then I did a bunch of situps before actually making the phone call.

I talked about this with the shrink (remembering that Stef has mentioned related things in the past) and he emphatically said that it would have been just as scary as death.  Displeasing and confronting this guy was like taking on my mom.  We talked about how my parents were not physically violent, but displeasing them could lead a child/infant/toddler to fear death nonetheless.  I said "yeah I guess I get that in an abstract way, so I need to process that a little more".  Then these podcasts - perfect timing.

The other point of all this:  the conversation went fine.  As a result of having it, we negotiated a bit more (yes, time will tell if he's going to stick to what he says but I'm optimistic, and in further negotiations I held strong when he tried to do his thing) and I'm in a much better position than I anticipated.  I also suspect the same is true for the person in the thread linked above.