"You IDIOT!"

emotional abuse and children



If you have ever made remarks to your child such as:

You are crushing your child's ego...
Children are not born with natural defenses against harmful words.
They (more than most adults) understand that what you
SAY means nothing if your actions don't back it up.
"If you REALLY love me, then prove it... ACT like you love me"


"What's the difference between Auschwitz and my childhood?
My torturer said she loved me."
~Patsy Pease~


"I was raised by a psychotic 'mother.' She took care of me, so to speak. My mother didn't
know how to deal with a constant reminder of everthing she lacked-I chose to look at myself
as something being filled with Light and Joy, everything a child is born with, she was a
decaying, sick person threatened by the fact that I was alive. I was told that things never
happened, it was all my imagination, that it was all a bad dream. My concepts of reality and
fantasy were severly shaken. I don't mind the torture as much as I mind that the torture is very
painful, but being told to wonder whether you're dreaming or wheather it's happening is really
damaging. She was still my mother. She was still my role-model, and if she said I was
imagining somthing, of course, she had to be right, because if she wasn't right, she wasn't
trustworthy. My whole world was her, and if my whole world was a lie, then what would I
do? Where would I go? Who would take care of me? The worst part of the truth is that she is
cruel and sadistic, even in her most sane moments. If you feel like you're a worthless
individual, you let just anything happen to you, and you're just a walking doormat."
~Patsy Pease~


When she made my Daddy leave, except for those few mutilated photographs, it was as if he had never existed at all, that he had been just a figment of my imagination. The lesson indelibly etched on me was that when she got mad enough she ripped people to shreds and made them disappear. That thought so scared me it was like falling into eternal darkness. I spent my life trying to make sure she loved me, trying to win her acceptence and approval so she wouldn't get that mad at me and make me disappear too...
"When Rabbit Howls..."


There weren't many food I absolutely hated, but there was one: liver as dry as old shoe leather. We were to remember "the starving children in other countries" and eat EVERY SINGLE BITE of food on our plates. This was no idle threat, either. I could not swallow that liver, it was so dry it was like having to chew cardboard. Many nights I had to sit at the table for hours alone, just sit, till I ate it all. I usually mananged to get it down long enough to be "excused", then promptly threw it all up again. I know it was a contest of will rather than nutrition, because she never made me start over and eat more.
"When Rabbit Howls..."


If you have a story you would like told please e-mail me



Sunny is my guardian for the emotionally abused.


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