In her childhood, Sandra suffered from her violent father – and from having to protect her mother from him. To this day, this shapes her relationship with her mother and her ability to bond. What would be the right way out of this trauma?
Dear Ms Peirano,
I, 30, often feel like I’m not really free from what happened in my childhood. My father used to beat our mother and also us children (me and my little sister) when he was drunk or something he didn’t like.
To this day my mother denies that it happens often and that it was bad. But I have clear memories of seeing him hit her in the face with his fists or spanking her when she was already on the floor.
Several times (about five to ten times) I intervened and stood in front of my mother. I don’t remember how old I was then, but maybe 12 or 13 years old. My father then left my mother and hit me because I interfered.
My father often hit me or my sister when our mother was out of the house and threatened us that we shouldn’t tell anything, otherwise something would happen again. I was always afraid of my father, and since our parents finally split up because my father had another wife (I was 19), I have hardly had any contact with him, only at big family celebrations.
But I still feel like I want to protect my mother. I call her every day, sometimes more than once a day. And I worry when she’s sick and move in with her to look after her, even though I live 200 kilometers away from her. Actually, I don’t really feel free to be in a stable relationship because I’m always busy with my mother. My biggest fear is losing her.
But lately, through conversations with friends, I’ve noticed that I don’t really understand why she did this to herself before and didn’t leave my father. I can’t understand that, and when I ask her about it, she evades and says that it happened only rarely and that he also had a lot of good points (for example, he made good money and we could afford a lot).
I’m honestly really confused and going in circles.
What do you advise me? A therapy?
Many greetings
Sandra V
Dear Sandra V,
I am very sorry for you that you experienced violence in your childhood! In my practice, I often hear stories of domestic violence in its various (and always ugly) forms. Sometimes the parents or one parent hit the children and the other parent lets it happen and sometimes even justifies it (“You were cheeky too!”), and sometimes it is one parent (usually the father) who does the mother and beat up the children.
The consequences of this are serious and very complex. The main issue is that your father did not protect you, but that he posed a real danger to you, your sister and your mother. It is not uncommon for the violence to escalate to such an extent that serious physical injuries or death occur. Watching your father (who is supposed to protect you) beat up your mother is traumatizing. Being overwhelmed by feelings of fear (of death) and helplessness is a severe psychological strain. Such recurring traumatic events alter thought patterns in the brain, and this is harmful.
Changed Thought Patterns in Case of Domestic Violence:
- “A father should protect his family” becomes “My father is a dangerous threat” and “I must protect my mother from my father.”
- “A mother is a support and a role model” becomes “I have to take care of my mother”, “My mother doesn’t tell the truth” and “She doesn’t show me how to stay safe.”
- “I can feel safe at home” becomes “It’s dangerous at home. Something terrible can happen at any moment. Better if I learn to read the signs and anticipate when it will happen again.”
- “As a child, I can concentrate on myself and my needs and my development” becomes “A child should constantly check the father for warning signs and protect the mother.”
- “If you have problems, get professional help” becomes “Problems are denied and covered up. Under no circumstances will the police or the youth welfare office be called!”
In children, the brain is still very plastic – mental patterns are only learned through experience. Therefore, a lot of values, thought patterns and action plans can get mixed up in a child’s brain as a result of traumatic experiences and the way parents deal with them. Traumatic events, especially when inflicted by those close to you, flood the brain with too many conflicting and threatening impressions. For example, the part that connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain (corpus callosum) fails under stress. As a result, the emotional and visual impressions cannot be linked holistically with action plans or values (“What is happening here is not ok, we need help”). Reactions such as freezing (freeze) set in, which make you incapable of acting and helpless.
When the traumatic event is over, it is important to talk about it and process the trauma. That was not possible in your family, because afterwards (and to this day) your mother denied or downplayed the traumatic events. In this way she contributed to the fact that the situations could always repeat themselves and you ultimately also learned from her that you are powerless. Because it seems your mother made it clear to you, without ever saying so, that if your father is violent you should never call the police. That would have been treason in your family.
This left you in a quandary: If you had taken care of yourself (your need for physical safety and emotional security), you should have called the police, or at least got yourself to safety. But then you would have had to abandon your mother, or you would have annoyed your father even more with the emergency call and he would have taken it out on your mother or you. In addition, your mother would have been angry with you if you had disclosed the family secret. In the worst case, you should have feared that your family would break up. How are you supposed to decide when you’re twelve or 13 years old? There is no good solution, and that makes you powerless and helpless (also called learned helplessness).
I assume that you have frozen the traumatic events and the resulting thought patterns (see above) and stored them in your trauma memory. There they are still threatening on an unconscious and partly conscious level, but not really easy to change because it is a kind of “block of ice”. These patterns make life difficult for you, and they also determine your current relationship with your mother. It’s a kind of reversal of roles: you worry about her and don’t feel free, while your mother takes care of you and is demanding.
Due to your traumatization, my clear recommendation would be that you go to trustworthy psychotherapy, namely from a therapist with training in trauma therapy. In therapy, on the one hand, the past is worked on and the effects on today, and in a certain part of the therapy, a trauma confrontation is carried out, for example with EMDR (read with this link) or other forms of therapy (read on this page).
I would also advise reading up on the topic of domestic violence before starting therapy. For example, it is recommended
“Beating: A very ordinary story of domestic violence” by Antje Joel.
Experience has shown that it is very helpful if you look into the causes of your problems and realize that other people who have had similar experiences also feel the same way. This also happens when you read the book, because the author has obviously collected similar stories.
I hope that you will soon find a good therapist and deal with these painful experiences, process your traumatic experiences and build new mental and emotional patterns. Then it will also become clear how you want to be in contact with your mother in the future and how you can better concentrate on your own life.
Kind regards and all the best to you
Juliet Peirano