Notes

fri 13 dec -

ik blijf mezelf maar vanuit schaamte benaderen, maar ik heb ook heel veel goed gedaan.

riagg moedige mij aan om niet naar wijn wonden te kijken, maar te focussen op het fixen van extern gedrag. niet alleen mijn ouders waren nep, de mensen die mij probeerden te helpen ook.

g&h gaven mij complimentjes voor dat ik slim was, ze creëerden een vals zelfvertrouwen, en versterkten daarmee mijn wonden

toevoegen aan part2.separation: dag in dag uit tweederangs behandeld worden, ik kreeg een consistent signaal van mijn ouders dat ik minder liefde waard was

het schrijven is een constant onderzoek hoe ik werd misvormd in mijn verleden, met wat voor manieren en effecten, en wanneer ik mij vervolgens vanuit de misvorm bekijk en vanuit mijn natuurlijke vorm. Des te meer ik mijn misvorm kan herkennen, des te meer ik eruit kan stappen, niet alleen qua gedrag, maar ook qua naar mijzelf kijken.

had ook

Todo:

1. primal notes verwerken in childhood 2
2. auto mutilation neigingen
3. childhood 1, kijken of het wel puur is, of dat mijn verdriet nuances naar iets verwijzen wat uncontained is
4. info boxes toevoegen aan childhood 3
5. childhood2: misschien white/black magic objectiever neerzetten (maar nog steeds duidelijk)
6. Zo was ik vroeger ook: Sun: You will be frozen by a coldness of the heart. This is a state when you feel neither pain nor love, just emptiness. It usually follows intense emotional experiences. You have given more than your share, till finally you are worn out, finished [...] Realize that aloofness and indifference are also powerful emotions and can accomplish much in certain circumstances, where friendliness has not succeeded
7. By talking about my deepest shame, I want to bring it into the light.
8. When saying yes to life, both shadow and light, my suffering is done and i come alive, The moment I stop running, From the demons in my head, and instead I choose to love them
9. Full of Know it all-s, if like to show how I'm learning, because I believe that is what leads to a fulfilling life
10. 
    

Struggling

minimal breathing "wat lekker, ik hoor je niet ademen"

platte buik

Believing what I was told

Almost daily I was abused by my parents

I have to tell my human experience. I have to tell what pain was in my family, how it entered my body, entered my thinking, entered my feeling, entered my heart, and became my truth. Stuck pain causes a distortion in reality, that keeps on distorting until it is cleared. Until it is seen for what it really is, a choice: a tendency to create more pain, or an invitation to meet your own uniqueness.

Pain is not something I have to be ashamed for. Even if it kills my life, scares people away from me, or makes me feel utterly lonely. I am not my pain. My pain is my reaction to something full of pain, an energetic imprint that keeps distorting my view on reality and messing up my life. It is not who I am.

My pain is that I consistently was told that I am difficult, causing problems, causing sadness, causing desperateness, causing anger, causing fear. It was combined with constant physical and emotional attacks, destroying my defenses. I was forced to allow these messages of pain to enter me. My pain is that I was made to believe that I am the cause for pain, and gradually I did start to believe it. And at some point it was my truth, that I am pain itself.

As a child, it was the only thing that made sense to me. My mother told me that I don't love her, that my heart is broken, and that she is worrying extremely about me. Almost always when I met her, it ended up in conflict, desperateness, disappointment, and loneliness. My father consistently punished for anything. Physically, I was constantly unwelcome, and my presence meant I had to pay for it in pain.

Everything I did on a deeper level, was condemned to be wrong by my parents. At one point, I simply started to believe that it was me. I was living with a mother who was constantly worrying about me,

--- LONG LIST ---

Jaap Spanjer

Anneke met cadeautjes

denigrerend praten over andere mensen inclusief familie

geert maakte korfbal belachelijk

geert maakte grapje over dikke mensen en Coba

herma: Dikke mensen zijn onwaardig

Hockey mensen zijn lelijk

8jaar: meerdere keren van school weggelopen

When I think back on my youth, I still have many black spots.

-CVT herbeleving- net zoals nagelknippen, etc-

herma bekkeninstabiliteit

kleine penis

Heidenen kunnen ook aardig zijn

Monstertje - voorzichtig

tandarts afspraak vergeten? jammer dan

moest een goed kind zijn zodat mijn moeder zich een goede moeder voelde

10jr, vakantie kon totaal geen contact maken aan tafeltennis tafel

niet praten over seks

geert ging lollig doen toen Eva en Bernadette er waren

--- DONE ---

groter stuk vlees als 10 (voortrekken)

als kind waren we heel ondeugend -> de grenzen van mijn ouders klopten niet

toen ik thuis grappig werd ging mijn vader mij onderdrukken

mijn vader onderdrukte mijn levensenergie ansich

geert concurrentie met kinderen, bijv toen ik zijn geplakte foto nadeed

T+L ook gehypnotiseerd dat ik en B black sheep zijn, geleerd ons te verafschuwen, maar hypocriet te doen alsof ze van ons houden

wouter heeft ook gevoel

ballet en allerlei zelfontwikkeling was slecht

ik koken, durf geen nee te zeggen -> onder strakke angst -> neppe dankbaarheid van herma

zelden aankijken

ogen aankijken == boos worden == vernederen

Christendom

lion king - Asterix

zondag geen tv behalve voetbal

twee keer naar de kerk "water is ook saai"

Water is lekker als je dorst hebt. Als je niet meer naar de kerk gaat kom je vanzelf weer in contact met je eigen waardigheid.

wachten bij de kerk

dreigen met stoppen van onderbroeken wassen

Rare afspraak van ouders

Het huis uit als je 18 bent

ze dachten alleen maar aan zichzelf

scheiding: met kamperen, ik en bram sliepen buiten de tent

paranoia

'iedereen maakt mij kapot'

'het is je eigen schuld jongetje'

zoog energie als mijn mijn moeder mij knuffelde

ik pestte vaak mijn jongere broer en zus, ik had aandacht nodig

briefje met mishandelingen

Huilen dit zijn niet mijn ouders, mijn echte ouders die wel echt van mij houden leven ergens anders

Niemand houdt van mij, en daar moet ik het maar mee doen

Zelfmoord voorbereiden

Black-white sheep separation

Eten uitkotsen

In elkaar getrapt door geert

in elkaar getrapt en gepest op school

herma hoofd onder de koude kraan

zelfmoord plannen: hij wil aandacht

geknepen door moeder

herma ging overdreven huilend voor mij staan

--

When I start to feel into my heart, how I felt when I was growing up, I stumble across a wall around my heart with big signs: not again, stay away from it, it brings you nothing but trouble, you get into hole you cannot get out, it is not worth the risk of losing yourself again. Not after you have done so much work on yourself to get out, and you are just starting to be happy again. Just don't do it.

Even more than thirty years later, the loneliness and sadness I felt in my youth, still has its grip on me. But I want to feel it again, I don't want to put it away and fake my life around it, or write a fake website. It is so important how I felt, to tell a story of depths and heights, that can inspire people. Inspiring myself, for example, how I was able to withstand so much darkness and loneliness, and I still found my way in the future, into the now, into learning to accept.

But I want to prevent my crying and turn away, pretend that it did not happen, that I did not lose my parents, that I did not lose myself, that when darkness came, I did not stop believing in myself, that I did not loose the grip on my own hand, my life did not turn into hate and fear, I did not left myself for dead, that I did not forget who I was.

But I did. All of it happened. And much more.

I start to remember my regrets. Should I have been less strict on my parents when I was young? Should I not have damaged my first girlfriend? Should I have just been more happy, maybe even fake it, because so many people fake their lives. I can do that too. Should I have been less difficult? What was the problem actually? There weren't any problems, right?

But why did I have nightmares almost every night of my adult life, until I started therapy? Why are nice dreams for me so rare, that I can only count 3 of them so far? Why was I waking up each morning low on energy, because I just relived every thing again? What are these nightmares of my youth, that keep haunting me? What the fuck really happened? My analysis of my family doesn't mean shit to me, if I cannot pinpoint how I felt.

It is this feeling of extreme loneliness. I remember a scene in which my parents just got angry at me, I was punished in the usual way, and my parents went along with their daily business. I was standing alone, and it happened for thousandth time.

A slight disappointment, that also for this time, I was not able to make my parents happy. I disappointed them again, and I don't feel they love me anymore. They are only angry at me. I must be so ugly, that I just cannot be part of something happy.

It is very strange, when as a child I tried, with all my best efforts, to be a good child as I could possibly be. Yet, after each time I tried my best, I was consistently invalidated, rejected, condemned, and humiliated. I kept on trying so hard, in so many ways, through so many rejections, to do what my parents wanted me to do. To be the child they wanted me to be. Every time I ended up being rejected.

There is nothing I could do right, but I believed I could, and that all failed attempts were because of me. I kept on getting shout at, being beaten, humiliated, and framed as annoying, impossible and difficult

.. .. .. .. ..

Also, we were repeatedly told that we had to leave the house soon after we became 18. And as soon as I was living away, she would visit me, using me as entertainment for her day-trips, and getting calls from me for her birthday. While being a child, she also threatened with putting me out the house to live elsewhere, because I was too 'problematic'. Children are disposable, put them away after you mess them up, but they can still can be used later on. My mother constantly bombarded me with hypocrisy, humiliation and meanness, sugarcoated with nice sentences and her-validating ideas. I had to choose believing that was normal, or leaving my mother. A child is by nature programmed to stay with its mother: so living with my mother was normal to me.

Being a very non-conscious person, she would immediately attack me.

Our parents thought they were raising us, but actually they were constantly using us for their own sick needs. They did give us food, clothes, and a room to sleep in, but it felt like a strange exchange for letting them use us.

Every time my OB did something that in any way touched the deep pain and fears of one of my parents, my parents had a choice: They could look at themselves, and feel what was triggered, and take time to process and heal it, optionally searching for help. Or they could fool themselves by believing it was not their deep pain they were feeling, but it was solely caused by the actions of my OB. Because my parents have little self-reflection, they rarely had a choice to look at themselves. The only option for them to use any of their physical and emotional violent tools available, to prevent my OB doing the thing that

When my OB(Older Brother) was born, he was born as an unwritten page: he did not have the memories, fears, and pains that my parents have. Coming from innocence, he had full trust in life, meeting life with its full capacities and emotions.

The first part of any childhood is without words, and is hard to remember. Yet, as soon as a child is born, a child negotiates with his parents through expressing his emotions. It is in this early stage, that the child already meets the implicit and explicit boundaries of his parents.

For example: A parent that has suppressed anger will have difficulties when a child keeps on expressing his anger about something. An unconscious parent will still be patient with their baby, until the point that their suppressed anger is triggered too much in any way. At that point, the parent will feel his immense suppressed anger, and in an overwhelm expresses it to anyone near him, usually his baby. Over time the child learns that his anger not welcome, and starts to suppress it himself. Of course anger does not always take this course of action, but any suppressed emotions of parents will always be triggered by children.

My previous article(XXX) ended with describing why my parents simply could not raise a family in harmony and joy. Even before the beginning, it was destined to go astray. I will describe what happened.

A family can only be as strong as its foundation, which is the relationship of the parents. In this relationship, ideally there is a desire to be with each other that leads to acceptance and trust, instead of a need to be with each other that leads to control and conflict.

feeding the narrative at all cost

Anyone who challenged their narrative, was met by their full destructive force of physical attacks, emotional abuse, and humiliation. As a child you are defenseless from your parents.

My parent kept on suffering, and took me and me siblings with them.

This narrative was put in place, so that they did not have to take responsibility for their own behavior. They did not manage to find courage, extremely scared from their own childhood full of abuse, and never took the courage.

Ik begon het eten uit te kosten, maar moest die onder dwang opeten als ik het nog een keer zou doen. Ik had het daarna nooit meer gedaan, en was gedwongen om het in me te nemen, ook het energetische.

The foundations of my family was the relationship of my parents. My emotional wounds made them needing each other.

My mother has difficulties using her brain because of her own severe abuse in her youth.

Because of her traumas, my mother is constantly looking for situations in which she can either play the hero or the victim. She doesn't know any better. She sees the world through the glasses of control in fear of humiliation: you either control and humiliate if necessary, or you are controlled and humiliated instead. She is over flooded by

My father is living inside his head, and needs external emotional stimulation to feel alive. My mother

Having suffered severe childhood abuse herself, my mother always dreamed of later having a wonderful family on her own.What she was not aware of, is that she brought in many unhealed wounds from her own past. Fearing humiliation, she is desperate to stay in control. And because of the chaos in her own youth, she is looking on participating in life as either being a victim or a hero. Her past of being emotional neglected, steers her to constantly get validation from the outside

A family can never be stronger than its foundations.

If each child of the family is like one room in the building, then the parents are the foundations, the concrete beneath the walls. But tension arises if the parents never learned from their own parents that foundations actually exist, and cracks start to appear in the walls of children's rooms. The parents will start to blame the children, instead of taking responsibility for the foundation.

In these articles, I like to describe without filters, what happened to me when I was young. It is a dark story, my invitation for dignity. Yet I tell it like this, with such a detail, because it is part of me. It was, and still is, part of my invitation.

Including how I look at the following:

My mother, who abused herself, and me.

My father, who abused himself, and me.

Myself, who was abused by them.

And with immense gratefulness,

I like to add:

That along my journey,

I have learned,

from countless beautiful people,

and my self,

to love myself.

I still am learning.

Accepting myself, is only possible with accepting what happened to me. If I keep pushing my past away, I will keep pushing parts of myself away: parts that are imprisoned in my past.

Only by letting the past work through me, feeling it as much as I can handle right now, I will grow to see life from a bigger perspective: increasing the dignified truth from which I live.

Acceptance cannot exist without truth. So only if I tell from my deepest truth, so I can find my deepest acceptance, so I can live my deepest growth, to find my deepest love.

From where was I able to the extract the essence of my truths?

So let me tell you then, about my darkness.

Before becoming the child of my parents, it was clear to me that becoming their child would be a very intense experience for me. I wanted my life to have deep meaning, through the dark and the light. I could feel their harsh difficulties in life, their immense pains, their extreme fears, their unanswered prayers, having lost almost all hope in life. And, they were willing to have me as their child. I wanted them to be the start of my life. My life, in which I will become alive.

What really happened during my childhood, was a total, awful mess, on many layers. It made my live very dark, making me feel intensely abused, humiliated, manipulated, terrorized, physically unsafe, unworthy of living, and extremely alone. I was victim from these wounds throughout my life until my early thirties, severely limiting my options on how I could live my life. In one occasion, I was hurting someone that came close to me: Repeating what was taught to me.

Now, I am increasingly connected to my powers and my dignity, and life is rich for me. Although sometimes, I still can get triggered, for a short time being controlled by my blind fears and its patterns, during which I still am a victim of my own wounds.

, what I understand from it, its context, and how my childhood impacted me.

Before becoming the child of my parents, it was clear to me that becoming their child would be a very intense experience for me. I wanted my life to have deep meaning through the dark and the light. I could feel their harsh difficulties in life, their immense pains, their extreme fears, their unanswered prayers, having lost almost all hope in life. They could be my perfect parents.

The origins of my wounds, are the wounds from my father and my mother, which in turn they inherited from their parents, and so on. The adults in any family are responsible for guiding and supporting the family, so that everyone can explore all facets of life they choose for themselves, in their own way, time, and speed. My parents simply had very little capacities for that. They even have many difficulties with exploring life on their own, because they suffered severe abuse in their own childhood. This made their hearts very closed, and so, they mostly are controlled by many of their blind fears. They are not the ones who are living their own lives. Their own blind fears are.

If you are abused in your childhood, you learn to abuse yourself. That is just all you know on how to live life. Because a child that is abused, learns to forget what life truly can be: being fully in your powers and connected to your dreams. If you never heal yourself, you will keep abusing yourself.

And the way you treat yourself, that is how you treat others, including how you treat your children. It is as simple as that. However beautiful or extremely painful the consequences may be. At the same, this is something anyone can hide behind, or use as a reason to take true responsibility. The choice really is, anyone's own.

Now looking back at my youth, I see many obvious signs and examples that they simply passed on their intense pain to their own children. My parents were largely out of touch with their dignity and personal power, living in a reality that has very little connections with the truth. They never gathered up to the courage to take a deep look in the mirror, and explore and heal their own wounds.

- Main patterns+narrative+defending&feeding the narrative at all cost-

A summary of the mess in my family can look like the following:

My mother was the spider in the web of the family. She ruled the house. She was not able to let go of control, because her blind fears taught her, that losing control is immediately followed by intense humiliation. To control and get what she needed, she used manipulation via either humiliation and emotional violence, or playing the good mom/husband.

My father has a big wound of getting humiliated in his youth, during which he fled to living in his mind. Consequently, he cannot take care of his emotions on his own, otherwise he would become numb, emotionally lifeless. In his mind he was living in a world in which he thought he was in charge, but he was constantly played out by my mother, on the deeper emotional level. She had him by the balls. Somewhere he was aware of it, but he could not grasp it.

My father desperately needed my mother, but at the same time he was very angry for getting manipulated and humiliated all the time. My mother felt misunderstood, she was helping my father, but unconsciously, she was constantly attacking his integrity and humiliating him through her need to control him. Because of her youth, my mother has difficulties thinking clearly, so she needed the clear mind of her husband to stay somewhat clear herself. My mother and father held each other in a very tight and invasive grip, always too close so that someone would feel attacked. They were fighting a lot, during which my mother used emotional violence and my father used physical intimidation.

Because my mother's self worth was compromised in her youth, she was constantly looking for validation from other people, including her children. When she started feeling insecure, she would start rattling cages in the family, to get any kind of attention or validation. If she did not get validation in a 'positive' way, she would get it in another way. Usually, it ended up getting into a conflict with me or my older brother. Getting into a conflict is a form of validation she could feed herself with. But because external validation only helps for a short while, she had to start conflicts over and over again.

When she could not win the conflicts with me or my older brother, it meant she would lose control or had to look at herself. But that would be impossible for her, because of her fear for humiliation and her spots of blind fear. So she asked my father to "handle it". That would almost always result in getting kicked or punched in the face, sometimes while lying on the ground, being in agony and terror, fearing for our lives.

My mother vaguely remembered it is unhealthy your children. But because she could not lose any conflict with us, she bypassed this easily. She would ask my father to hit us, and she convinced herself that she has never hit us. She repeatedly said "I have never hit you". When she was feeling so immense helpless, the only thing for her left to do, was lying, and living in her reality, far away from the truth. Also, she would abuse her husband as the scapegoat as the one who did hit the children. Many times my father physically attacked us by himself. But my mother could not stop that, because then he also could not hit us when she asked for it. My father allowed himself to be abused by his wife, because he cannot life without her.

Deep down, my mother felt she was not being the mother she wanted, although with desperation she just did not know how to do it differently. This increased her hunger for external validation even more. She demanded from me, that I say to her "I love you", which I did. When someone demands from anyone to say those words, it is not about the meaning anymore, because otherwise that someone would not ask it. For my mother it was her helplessness in her role as a mother, feeling she was not the mother she wanted to be. In her panic she needed validation, and abused her adult powers to take it from a child. By that, for me, she was also destroying the true meaning those words can have between two people. In the same way, she also demanded from me that I would appreciate her as a person, blaming me for "you don't like anything about me", and forcing me to start falsely appreciating her.

My mother felt herself to be extremely helpless in her own youth. For her it was a constant battle, in which she either was the super strong hero, or the very weak victim of her own parents. She didn't know life any differently: so as a result in her later life, she kept on creating that pattern again and again. For creating her family, she married a husband that would fit into her patterns. He was emotionally helpless, so she could help him all the time and she could feel being a hero. At the same time he was emotionally incompetent, so she could be a victim of his (mis)behavior well.

The only way in which my mother could heal her victim-hero pattern, was feeling and moving through the pain that caused it. But because she did not do that, the pattern was controlling her, forcing her to keep on recreating the same situations over and over again.

Apart from many occasions when my mother played the helpless victim in any situation, she also played victim of her man in front of the kids. She would complain about his behavior, that she is so unfortunate to have married him. My mother would undermine her husband in front of the children.

Because of the severe abuse my older brother and I suffered, we developed emotional illnesses. In the context of our severely abusive family, we developed anti-social behavior. We became the black sheep of the family. The younger two children became the white sheep. Again this was a repetition of the hero-victim pattern of my mother. When she would feel the need to feel a victim or a hero, she would spend time with me or my older brother, further deforming us. When she needed validation for being a good mom, she would ignore me and my older brother and spent time with the younger children. She would be feeding them manipulative love and spoiling them to get validation and recognition in return.

Out of this black/white sheep dynamics, another pattern originated. Me and my older brother became the garbage bin for any emotional garbage my mother had. Because if she got angry with her white-sheep children, it meant her self false-image of being a good mom bursted in pieces. Logically, it probably even went that far, that when she was with one of her white-sheep children, and they behaved in a way she didn't like, she saved her anger internally internally. Waiting for the moment that my older brother or me was around, taking it out on us. It must have been the same for the anger she couldn't throw at her husband.

When my mother grew up in our own family, having a very hard time herself, she dreamed of later having a happy family. It would have been beautiful for her to have that. But her unhealed wounds made that impossible for her; she kept on repeating her patterns. My mother came to see that her family is not the happy family of her childhood dreams. Having very little self reflection, she would blame me and my older brother. I felt an intense hate from her, for "ruining up her childhood dreams". But she could not consciously think that she hated me, because then her false self image of a loving mother would burst. So deep down she hated me, while she kept pushing away any thoughts about it. But it was clear from her actions.

My mother had difficulties telling what she wanted. Directly telling what she needed, meant for her to expose her inner world, which is impossible, since she has a blind fear for being vulnerable and humiliated. When my mother wanted to us to do something, often she started talking about people that do the exact opposite, and how ridiculous they are.

When we grew up, we were repeatedly told that we had to leave the house when reached the age of 18. This was told indirectly, by saying that children that still live at home after 18 are ridiculous. Even more, she saw children as some conditional investment for the future. For her, having children meant to suffer during their youth and to later have adult children as some sort of friends and have day-trips with.

When she kept on creating a big mess in her family, she started to threaten the black-sheep children by handling them over to child services. Because she could not self-reflect, she really believed that the problem was her children instead of herself and her husband. But instead she was destroying her own children, threatening them with putting them outside the family, and still expecting them to be friends later on in life. She could just never really be there for us.

Because my mother was not aware of her big holes for validation, love and intimacy, she used her children to fill those holes. At home, we had several cats. When my mother's cat was lying on my mother's lap, and my mother was 'stroking' it, it looked like my mother used the cat to suck life energy out of the cat, as some kind of intravenous therapy. Knowing the stories I do consciously remember, I can only conclude that she must have done the same to her children.

My mother needed me to be her problem child. When I sometimes managed to get some distance from her, she was feeling her big lack of validation and intimacy. She simply did not know what do with that, other then forcing me to get back into connection again. The strategy she used for this was to hysterically tell me that she is very worried about me and I should be worried to. She was using desperation as a means to re-establish connection with me. She forced me to feel worried as well, and reach out to her, after which she could act through her pattern of being the hero mother.

In a dysfunctional family, the second child often becomes the emotional sponge, absorbing all the emotions for which no responsibility is taken, of which there were many. In this emotional role, it has the strongest bonding with the mother. I was the second child. Sometimes, this second child is seen and used by the mother as the surrogate spouse, being the perfect husband that her real partner can not be. Around the age of 11, she started to behave strange to me, talking longer to me and sharing more of her feelings. In some strange way, it even became romantic. As a 11-year-old, I was thinking "if I want, I can take the place of my father being her lover". It must have been in a time when they had lots of marital struggles. My mother was constantly living through her unconscious fears and desires, having very little awareness of what was really going on.

Throughout her life, my mother was victim of the abuse in her own childhood. She would complain to me about her childhood with "my mother has done things to me that I can only tell when you are an adult". I don't question the severity of her statement. But essentially she was being the victim in front of me, her child, forcing me into caring for her.

My mother associated her black-sheep children with negativity, and her white-sheep children with positivity. Logically, this resulted in a difference of receiving affection. For example when I wanted to learn to play the piano, I had to buy my books myself, riding on my own bicycle to the shop. When once I asked to play the harp, I got the answer it was 'too expensive' (even renting), while my younger sister got her own (western concert) flute and the necessary books, including extra books for playing the piano "she played so nice". She consistently degraded me and my older brother. Because if we were becoming too happy, it would not fit with her victim/hero patterns and her false self-image, and she would have to face her many blind fears. She once offered me to go to painting lessons, which didn't interest me. But to maintain her patterns and false self-image, she needed to have offered me something I didn't want. She consistently deformed me to what she needed me to be.

Once I said that she was favoring my younger two siblings over me. She said it was a horrible thing to say, so I banished that thought from my mind, I simply started believing that what I felt was not true: I had to choose between feeling the truth or having a connection with my mother. After that my mother repeatedly humiliated in front of the family with one of her favorite sayings "I will give you a weighing scale on your birthday, so you can be happy". A connection with its mother is everything to a child: she abused that maximally. I sold myself to her. She had me by the balls. Me too.

My mother was living a reality that had virtually no connection with what was really going on. She kept losing herself in her own maze of wounds and blind fears. At some point my mother was working at child-protection services of the government, while she was abusing her children at home. She was also giving 'advice' on matters like domestic abuse and out-of-home placement of children. For her being a "loving child services agent" served as a counterbalance for what she did in her own family. When people cannot feel their pain, they try anything to avoid and hide hit. Anything.

I had to choose believing that was normal, or leaving my mother. A child is by nature programmed to stay with its mother: so living with my mother was normal to me.

At home, we had several cats. Because my mother wanted them. I remember that one of the cats was was a favorite to my mother. The thing is, when that cat was lying on my mother's lap, and my mother was 'stroking' it, it looked like my mother used the cat to suck life energy out of the cat, as some kind of intravenous therapy. Knowing the stories I do consciously remember, I can only conclude that she must have done the same to me when I was a baby. It is a grave compromise of my integrity, being forced to give your body away like that.

The hypocrisy went on and on. At some point my mother was even working at child-protection services of the government. Also giving 'advice' on matters like domestic abuse and out-of-home placement of children. And my father was heading the board of the church, supposedly an institute of love. An horrific display of hypocrisy and being out of touch with reality.

My mother just didn't know how to be a mother. Being very desperate, she was wanting to do anything to move away from that feeling. Anything.

It is a grave compromise of my integrity, being forced to give your body away like that.

Because my mother had many spots of blind fear, she was greatly hindered in her abilities to self reflect. If you see a situation that you affect negatively yourself, you cannot see it when it is related to your spots of blind fear. These spots will do anything to prevent you feeling the related pain and fear. In order to "protect" you, your mind will convince you that any outside plausible factor is the cause of any problem.

in my family that pointed to the pains in my parents, they never choose to gather up their courage

A sensible starting point for describing it, may be a metaphor for the family in which I grew up.

For my parents, running the family was like trying to drive a car that is total loss. But actually, our parents broke it, constantly crashing it along the way and fighting about how to drive to the next crash. Moreover, they thought the car was running reasonably okay. My mother even is a car license official, advising the government when some parents aren't allowed to drive. So if anything, it certainly is not her. Sometimes, they wondered about other cars, how they somehow drove faster and the passengers smiled most of the way. But those cars don't go to church each Sunday.

By the way, they often experienced sudden, immense heavy shocks through the car. These shocks threw everyone out of their chairs in the dashboard, and sometimes through the windows. The seatbelts stopped working a long time ago, but the oldest two children seemed to work just fine as airbags most of the time. Annoyingly, these older children are screaming a lot of the time and resisting their tasks. My parents were sure "They must be the reason why this car drives a bit slower and everyone has bruises and injuries. Maybe we should put them put them in a bus with other resisting children". Luckily the younger two children don't have these problems, "Look how nice they are!".

Next to that, all of these shocks were making the children very scared, it was terrorizing them. My parents didn't really notice; the car was driving similar to the cars their parents drove when they were young. Maybe even 3% better.

Because my parents did not have the courage, clarity and dignity, to see how their own actions influenced any situation, they started looking outside themselves for a reason. For that, they deformed their first two children into their black sheep: my older brother and me. The other two younger two siblings got the role of white sheep: my younger sister and my younger brother.

You need a driving's license to drive a car, you need study to get a job, but anyone can become a parent.

This was perfectly fitting for the patterns of my mother. Whenever she wanted to feel like a victim or a hero, she would spent time with me or my brother, further deforming us. Whenever she want to feel good about herself being a mom, she ignored her first two children, and spent time with her white sheep, feeding my younger two siblings manipulative love, to get validation and recognition in return. This also helped the patterns of my father. He has trouble standing up for himself in society, so whenever he wanted to feel seen, he would terrorize me and my older brother.

It was a family in which always multiple things were going on, like

My role as a black sheep, came with many demands. So much, that I had to give up my own boundaries, and compromise on my own integrity as a child.

Because children are very receptive for the ideas of their parents, my parents

However, it may be helpful to understand that my family as a system, was almost always out of balance. There were always multiple things going on: hidden conflicts, domination, manipulation, emotional violence, controlling each other, physical abuse, humiliation, miscommunication, many marital problems, burnouts, parents playing the victim, hysteria, talking behind each other's back, complaining, bullying, policing, uncomfortable angry moments of silence, scapegoating, arguments, parents seeking validation, emotional incest, hypocrisy, lying, stealing, exclusion, hidden disappointments, growing frustration, slamming doors, shouting, fighting, mistrust, terror, rebelling,

, and were punishing/humiliating me and my older brother for it.

some (hidden) conflict going on, hidden disappointments

There was no safety at all, at any place, at any moment.

My family, consisting out of two parents and four children, found its way into a very twisted look on reality, very far from the truth. It was an extremely hypocritical narrative, that supported and allowed my parents in their behavior of abuse and humiliation towards their children. My parents, extremely scared from severe abuse and humiliation they suffered in their own childhood, tragically passed it on to their children. During my childhood, they chose to have a self-serving (fear-serving) narrative, while abusing and humiliating their children. In the family, there was a lot of sadness, loneliness, humiliation, fighting, anger, hate, unsafety and insecurity. They never chose to gather up their courage and take responsibility for their own behavior.

Anyone who challenged their narrative, was met by their full destructive force of physical attacks, emotional abuse, and humiliation. As a child you are defenseless from your parents.

My parent kept on suffering, and took me and me siblings with them.

This narrative was put in place, so that they did not have to take responsibility for their own behavior. They did not manage to find courage, extremely scared from their own childhood full of abuse, and never took the courage.

and can put all blame on me and my older brother. Anyone who challenged that narrative, was abused

. Nobody cares for each other, every one cares only for himself, but is completely unable to, because the whole family is one big war zone and a snake hole.

General situation, total feeling,

specific situations and specific feelings.

a lot happened, so much, that i forgot many concrete situations, I banned them from my memories, sometimes it feels like a blackhole

the most important to write is how deeply I suffered, the richness of the darkness I experienced

The immense suffering I experienced, how it made me feel, and from what situations i got those feelings, and from what dark places my parents created those situations.

I grew up in a family that you could call a peculiar case. Actually I don't think a 'normal' family exists; but, if your read on, you might understand my choice of words.

My parents where disconnected from their hearts, so they simply could not raise us through the language of love. They brought together the immense unhealed pain from their own childhood as a soil for our family. Our family life consisted out of constant hidden conflicts and frequent fighting, both verbally and physically. In this very unstable warzone, no one could ever get what they needed via genuine interaction. For my mother to get what she wanted, she resorted to emotional manipulation, humiliation and alternating between playing the victim and the hero. She ruled the house. For my father to get what he wanted, he resorted to authoritative terror and domination by physical abuse. Consciously he thought he ruled, but in his emotional dependency he was constantly played out by my mother. Also, my mother would complain about her husband to her children when he was not around, like "he can not even care for himself, I have to do it". Disrespecting him and undermining his position. She had him by the balls. On top of this was the layer of hypocrisy and christianity (we were 'good' christians, whatever that meant...), keeping up appearance and imposing a way of thinking to hypnotize all six of us to convince we were doing okay: If you have very, very little love, and you cannot feel the truth to heal it, you are going to fool your way around it. But deep, deep down, you always know.

How this impacted my siblings, I will mostly leave to their privacy. To sketch the minimum dynamics I found myself in, it played out somewhat like this: My older brother instinctively felt the hypocrisy and constantly rebelled and aggressed to my parents. At the same time, he tried to care for his younger siblings, through the mess the whole family was in. He was never understood and was made into a living-in outcast. He stood for an heroic cause, fighting a battle he never won. I saw that being a rebel didn't work out, and I chose the role of a conforming policer and emotional sponge, living by rules in my mind and suppressing my own feelings. Playing the role opposite to my brother's, we were constantly fighting: I used the tactics of emotional abuse and humiliation that I learned from my mother, and he resorted to the tactics of physical abuse he learned from my father. I treated my brother as if he had a highly contagious disease, everything that he touched, I could only touched it after I washed it. I was just expressing how my parents actually treated him. As a result of the roles we adopted, we got labelled the problem childs. But actually we were acting out the the poisonous energies that ran through family, being a garbage bin. My younger two siblings noticed that being a rebel or emotionless conformist didn't quite work out, they resorted to respectively withdrawing and overcaring. They also adopted the role of becoming 'perfect children', feeding my mother to be validated being a 'good mother', and that having two problem childs wasn't "her fault". My mother eventually got the cast of actors she wanted: whenever she felt sad/anger and wanted to feel a victim, or playing the hero for looking after her 'problem children', she would spend time with me or my older brother, creating more misery. Whenever she wanted to feel a good mother she would ignore us and spend time with my younger 2 siblings, spoiling and forcing them manipulative love to get recognition in return. My father was mostly working, or when at home, tired from being overworked and resorting to his usual patterns. Because he could not make a stand for himself, not in society and not in his family towards his wife, the only way he could feel seen was by beating his problem children, imposing fear in them. The younger 'perfect' children were not to be really attacked. Just some minor slaps so that he could believe his own story.

As for my personal experience, I was living in constant terror of being beaten and humiliated. My mother was by words pretending to be nice to me, but in behavior she was extremely mean. For example, my mother creates conflict with anyone who doesn't play by her rules. So when she was in conflict with me, it would frequently escalate. And when she couldn't 'win' from me, she would ask my father to 'handle it', so that would mean lying on the ground in terror and agony, being kicked and hit by your father: fearing for my life. She pretended to have never physically hit us, but being the 'caring mother', who would have 'disagreements' with me. It is hard to show affection for you mother if you treat she treats you like that. But she forced me on saying "I love you", which I did, because she needed validation.

She also needed me to be a problem child. When I sometimes managed to get some distance for her to get some rest in my system, she would pop up in my bedroom hysterically. She would be saying how worried she is about me, implying I really should be worried too. In that inflicted helplessness I was supposed to reach out to her, so that she can feel connection and validation for being a hero mother for a problem child. She was abusing me for feeling connection, an endless hole she needed to fill in. But as soon as I tried to wrestle free from this, she negatively enforced the entanglement by conflict or hysteria. I was taught to play by her rules and only hers. Anytime as soon as there was a sign of discontent in her, I startled, and scanned if I could be made the cause for this, and adjusted my behavior, feelings and thoughts.

In a dysfunctional family, the 2nd child often becomes the emotional sponge, absorbing all the emotions for which no responsibility is taken, of which there were many. In this emotional role, it has the strongest bonding with the mother. When it is a boy, it can even becomes the surrogate spouse of his mother, filling the unmet desires of the mother for a perfect husband. It turned out I was the one cooking every Monday for the family. Even more, around my 11th year there was a time when my mother shared more intimate feelings, she was becoming strangely close in the loving compliments she gave me. And as a 11-year-old, I was thinking "if I want, I can take the place of my father being her lover". It must have been in a time when they had lots of marital struggles. Twenty years later, when I read about surrogate spouse theories, it was clear as day to me. It was such a twisted and strange dynamics I had then found myself in, also being forced to connect with my mother on a intimate and romantic level. Forcing a child into being a surrogate spouse is also known as emotional incest.

My mother had her own share of abuse in her childhood. But because she never healed it, she passed it on to her children. She would complain to me about her childhood with "my mother has done things to me that I can only tell when you are an adult". I don't question the severity of her statement. Essentially she was being the victim in front of me, her child, forcing me into caring for her. And because of her "cliffhangers" I assumed my life was quite okay, since hers was "really bad". The hypocrisy and twistedness was being fed from all angles: pain goes anywhere when you don't care for it. During her growing up she fantasized about later having a lovely family. And when I, one of her children, was being a "problem child", she hated me for ruining her childhood dream: "you will be knowing that >you< are the one being sick causing the problems".

'Problem' children get less affection and care than 'perfect' children. For example when I wanted to learn to play the piano, I had to buy my books myself, riding on my bicycle to the shop. When once I asked to play the harp, I got the answer it was 'too expensive' (even renting), while my younger sister got her own (western concert) flute and the necessary books, including extra books for playing the piano "she played so nice". Maybe when I played the harp I was able to have some form of self-expression and be slightly happy. She could not have that. She once offered me to go to painting lessons, which didn't interest me. But she needed to have offered me something I didn't want, so she could keep on pointing to me. She consistently deformed me to what she needed me to be. Once I said that she was favoring my younger two siblings over me. She said it was a horrible thing to say, so I banished that thought from my mind, I simply started believing that what I felt was not true: I had to choose between feeling the truth or having a connection with my mother. But my mother repeatedly humiliated in front of the family with one of her favorite sayings "I will give you a weighing scale on your birthday, so you can be happy". A connection with its mother is everything to a child: she abused that maximally. I sold myself to her. She had me by the balls. Me too.

Our mother never intended to be really there for us. "I love your father more than you, you do understand that, right?" Also, we were repeatedly told that we had to leave the house soon after we became 18. And as soon as I was living away, she would visit me, using me as entertainment for her day-trips, and getting calls from me for her birthday. While being a child, she also threatened with putting me out the house to live elsewhere, because I was too 'problematic'. Children are disposable, put them away after you mess them up, but they can still can be used later on. My mother constantly bombarded me with hypocrisy, humiliation and meanness, sugarcoated with nice sentences and her-validating ideas. I had to choose believing that was normal, or leaving my mother. A child is by nature programmed to stay with its mother: so living with my mother was normal to me.

At home, we had several cats. Because my mother wanted them. I remember that one of the cats was was a favorite to my mother. The thing is, when that cat was lying on my mother's lap, and my mother was 'stroking' it, it looked like my mother used the cat to suck life energy out of the cat, as some kind of intravenous therapy. Knowing the stories I do consciously remember, I can only conclude that she must have done the same to me when I was a baby. It is a grave compromise of my integrity, being forced to give your body away like that.

The hypocrisy went on and on. At some point my mother was even working at child-protection services of the government. Also giving 'advice' on matters like domestic abuse and out-of-home placement of children. + Father head of board of church. An horrific display of hypocrisy and being out of touch with reality.

She chose to not take responsibility for her pain. Thus she was constantly reliving it in her subconscious, controller her. And her pain choose me as its sponge. But I wasn't allowed to reflect it back, I had to take it all in. And if I was trying to reflect it, it came back stronger, until I allowed it in.

Sometimes I catch myself thinking "Oh man, they better not be my parents, can't even begin to imagine..." But they were.

toen ik veel geld had en veel cadeautjes voor mijzelf kocht was herma bang dat ik niet meer blij werd als ik iets van haar kreeg

toen ik fles van siroop verkeerd open maakte, en niet naar haar advies luisterde, moest ik voor straf de vieze trui de hele dag aan

ze klaagde een keer letterlijk dat ik haar niet waardeerde als zoon

ik ga nu naar de bart smit.., en ben dan ik dan een goede moeder?

je mag nog best blij zijn dat je zo'n vriendin hebt, zo leuk ben je niet hoor

met ontkennen van fysieke straffen veroordeeld/vernederd ze geert, en manipuleert zij zichzelf in die lieve rol, terwijl ze dus de bitch was

'expressing' repressed emotions, voorbeeld frido-elian

overgang ouders - ik: monstertje

---

I have been as truthful as I could in describing how I experienced my parents. In the immense chaos our family found itself in, my parents also made gestures that originated out of love. But there was very little space for that. When I got constantly bombarded my explicit and silent abuse of all kinds, I needed to close my heart, so I could not feel and receive the loving gestures. Opening my heart would mean dying from the overwhelming abuse. So this is how I experienced growing up. There are enough theories about why parents abuse their own children, it usually comes down to this: how you were abused, without healing it, that is how you constantly abuse yourself, and that is how you abuse your children. But to acknowledging what happened to me, there is only one truth: my accounts of what I experienced, and the sides I saw from my parents, being a child. Maybe once they become conscious of the abuse they did to their children, thus to themselves, maybe feeling inspired to start their own healing journey.

I want to add that everyone was enormously trying their best, trying to make living together work. But the breathing space for this was very small: the harsh truth is that the above behavioural patterns were dominant in our family, by a landslide. There was just no clarity and consciousness to turn things around, not even slightly.

Besides my father and mother, I had one older brother, a younger sister and and a younger brother, so six of us in total. In our family there were many well-hearted intentions in each of us that could invite beauty and growth. However, there was rarely any soil of love, preventing that these seeds could ever sprout: