Abusive childhood and the idea of family after that

When I think of family, I don’t get the warm fuzzy feeling. I get rather feelings like…I have no idea how to do family….And that is the thing. Most people who have had fairly normal childhood will never understand why someone would be afraid of the concept of family…

I have been scared of all my boyfriends families…In my mind I always thought that they will judge me, never find me fitting to their son etc. My family was not a safe space, so I could not imagine any other would either.

So I avoided families. I avoided my boyfriend’s families and distanced myself from them. I was scared. The old memories of being trapped, being abused, having nowhere to go to were with me. I found it excruciating to visit their families, because I was alert and scared most of the time.

I still imagine that I am somehow unsuitable for family life. Mostly because I have such mixed feelings when it comes to family. On one hand, I imagine the warmth and welcoming athmosphere, on the other hand, I imagine control, anger, fear….

I think the struggles I am describing here are not individual, but are common to people who have had an abusive childhood. It is very difficult to somehow reprogram the way you are used to seeing family in your mind.

Learned helplessness

I have throughout my life never thought of myself as capable. More I have imagined myself constantly in need of someone else who would take the responsibility in various parts of my life. These parts have included practical things such as moving, finances, household chores etc. and they have included also dealing with conflicts and negotiations. I have simply not been very good at believing in my own agency and have always tried to hide behind someone else who I thought was more powerful.

This kind of attitude does create dependency relationships. Even worse, realizing that those are dependency relationships does not really help you very much if you are so dependent on this other person.

For the last three years I have been single. It has been quite educational to be single in a foreign country where I don’t have that many friends either. One could say that for someone who is used to dependency that situation is well….their nightmare.

I am finally starting to realize that the problem I have been having is not that I cannot manage with those aforementioned things…the problem is that I don’t believe I can. I was raised to believe that I was completely incapable in most things. Instead of being taught I was constantly getting yelled at and told that well….I would never measure up to much…

My steps towards independence have been….well difficult and continue to be difficult. If you have spent your life trying to delegate responsibility, you will have to start learning some things when you are 30. Naturally you are not as good as other people around you who have had this possibility to practice those things for long years. But even more than practical skills…changing the mentality towards actually thinking and believing that you can do things…..that is even more challenging.