STORY OF ABUSE TO ANYONE WHO LISTENS

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you are extremly strong i also love music have you considered talking to a teacher or a relative other than your mom

not to menton you have made me feel extremly better thank you you are one of the lights that shine through the darkness in my world

This is a interesting story so I will try to break it down into periods of my life. I normally wouldn't even want to tell this story but since you of young age and looking for hope I hope that I can help relate to you at least alittle bit.

In my early childhood I don't really remember all that much. The things that I do know is my mother did use drugs while she was prego with me and my father did things like blowing pot smoke in my face and such when I was a little baby. Other then that before school I remember my dad broke a record over my head once because I scratched it.

In kindergarden I was bright and great at school but social I wasn't talking to people I would play by myself which transfered into primary school. First grade through fifth grade were not fun for me. I was behind in reading and even though I exelled at math, everyone in my life focused on what I was bad at instead of good at. My parents were both physically abusive and emotionally abusive using scare tacts to get there way with there children. My mother hit me in the back with a belt buckle once and my dad use to throw shoes at me and hit me in the chest with his finger when he was mad at me. I frustrated my parents because they didn't understand why I was so bright and so stunted at the same time. They assumed I was being lazy and use to tell me that I needed to try harder and apply myself. All the time I figure that I am trying as hard as I can and I am just not achieving the same as other people.

When I went into 6 grade things changed in my family. My mom left my dad because of his drug problem and decided that our family would be better off with out him. My mom got a roomate that was abusive and her child would also often attack me. In Sixth grade I only went to school for 3 weeks because I was picked on and beat up on because of the school I went too. In the seventh grade my mom let my dad move back in because he had become clean and found God. The school I went to in seventh grade no one would talk to me and besides the time someone tried to push me over the upstairs balcony I didn't actually have to much problem with agression at that school. My dad's new found God love was actually more of a damper on my social life because the people I had excepted as the only people who would be around me were on the lower side of societies standards as far as the way they acted. My dad didn't like this so I was just not allowed to have friends because the only people that would befriend me, I wasn't allowed to hang out with. We then decided to move to another city when I was in 8th grade. I had become a shut in by now pretty much and didn't really hang out with anyone. I refused to make friends in my new city and continued to live by myself. My dad started forcing me to go to Church and Youth Groups so I could make friends that were positive influences. I usually hung out by myself in these youth group situations.

Then I moved on to High School. In high school I was picked on a beat up a lot. Almost every day for four years straight. My parents refused to move and also refused to take me out of school. I tryed to kill myself twice. School was really awful for me and I really wish that kids didn't have to go through the things they have to go through in school in the US. I know that good things happen in all of this and I am not trying to make a moppy story but with all the bad stuff that happened it makes it really hard for me to remember the good times that happened when I grew up. Luckly five years ago I met a wonderful woman with social phobia that well in the words of Forest Gump we go together like peas and carrots. Because I met this girl I ended up quickly moving out of my parents house and have been living with her for the last five years. I work now but I don't like it. I can't stand people even touching me but I have to say that I am glad that I made it through all that and feel that I am a better person because of it. Sorry to hear you are having trouble. I hope as they did with me that things get better for you as well. You just have to be tough. And I really think it is unfair to even have to tell people that but things will be better once you finish school. Good luck.

I'd have to say my school experiences shaped the person I am today, I am a mistrusting paranoid freak who thinks any compliment is an veiled insult or anyone offering me help is out to screw me over. What a life. I rarely leave the house and when I do its an night so I encounter fewer people. I am afraid sooner or later someone is going to say or do something that is going to set off a violent meltdown and I am going to beat them to death.

When I was in middle and the first half of high school I was constantly beaten up, spit on, and insulted for just being there. The teachers saw it happen but did nothing some even thought it was funny. I even had someone who was sitting behind me set my the back of shirt on fire while I was in a crowded studyhall with a teacher present. Funny thing is the only person who seemed to be upset about me being set on fire was one of my more viscious bullies. All the teacher did was take the lighter away from him and yelled at me because he doesn't have trouble in any of his classes until I show up.

I had bullies kick my legs out from under me going down stairs causing me to land flat on my back and slide down the stairs, A bully spit in my face in front of a teacher and the stupid b***h asks me if I was ok and said "No you stupid b***h I just got spit on and you did nothing about!" Yeah she did something I got internal suspension for a week when she wrote me up but I had a meltdown in the princples office where I threatend a lawsuit so it scared him enough to ask some witnesses what happened so the kid who spit in my face got suspened from school for two weeks and the teacher was yelled at.

After school I thought well that nightmare is behind me I'll never be bullied or picked on again. WRONG! Every job I worked I have encounterd bullying or insults. My first job long term job was as bad as high school no one hit me or spit on me but the insults were worse and more frequent there was definately a us vs you mentality against me. I could not hit anyone like in high school because I would get fired and I needed the money. I spent my time spitting in their food and drinks, I also would smear nasty things in their coat sleeves and serve them rotten chicken wings in hopes of making them ill them with e-coli bacteria.

F##K this society and the NT's who live in it. I'd like to thank the NT's for the 35 years of bullsh!t they have put me through and wish they and all those they love die of cancer. I only had 4 good years and those were the years before I attended school but I have few memories of those years.

Last edited by Todesking on 22 Jan 2011, 5:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thankfully, I've faced very little abuse.

Edit: Actually, I was bullied an awful lot in school. And that used to bother me. But now I really could not care less. That was the past, I can't change it. I also tend to believe that despite what I see, humanity has a lot of potential to be good. Which is why I'm not bitter now.

Abuse of any kind can cause some confusion of symptoms.

Abuse, if it's serious enough, can cause severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD can cause many behavioral changes that are VERY similar to Asperger Syndrome. If AS is present before PTSD, PTSD can cause AS traits to become amplified.

It is VERY important to be aware also that PTSD can be misdiagnosed as Autism, as well as other disorders.

It is extremely important that any doctor dealing with evaluating you, or treating you is FULLY aware of any abuse you have suffered.

When I was a kid my Mother always seemed very tired and worn out - likely due to her heart condition which I was unaware of back then. Loving, but tired and seemingly peeved all the time.
I only have warm, rose-scented memories of Mum.

My Father always felt "hard" and a little frightening, and I formed the impression that he was always being too hard with my Mother. I can remember nothing specific now except this constant, underlying impression I had.

But he had his moments with me too. Nothing as overt and undisguised as the cruelty in some of the earlier posts, but he seemed to enjoy needling me about things.
A couple which still sting after all these years:
"You'll never amount to anything useful" is a pretty common one I remember. (I was around 7 years old, FFS)
"Me and your Mum really wanted another girl - but we got you instead". Seeing this as text completely fails to convey the tone of disgust and anger it was spoken with, and I can still remember the horrible empty feelings it created in me.

He seemed to take an active dislike in some of my interests, one of which was collecting old radios from jumble sales. It's not like a I had a huge pile of them - just five or so kept out of the way under some stairs, but he just took them and dumped the lot without bothering to tell me. I was lost for weeks because of that, you bastard.
They were more real to me than you would ever understand and I knew every single part of each one.
And it's odd, thinking back to the odd beating I got (he'd use his thin leather belt on me) - even then I detached from the actual event of being beaten and observed it happening from "some other" place.

School was made bearable because of the physics and chemistry lessons, in which I excelled.
The difficult part was dealing with the bullying, the constant background drone of bullies always seeking me out and finding something to poke fun at. If it wasn't my school blazer (a little too small for me) then it was my glasses. When my Mother died, that became an excuse for more of it. Or that I was skinny. Or that I was hopeless at sports.
If not those then it was one particular exhibition-grade moron who would take every opportunity of whining "foss-iil" at me in a nasty sing-song voice (palaeontology was a special interest at that time).
The teachers weren't interested in reports of bullying, which they seemed incapable of taking seriously let alone investigate.
But they were pretty quick to deal with stuff they witnessed.

So I guess "typically borderline dysfunctional" would sum up those early years.

Can you add more detail to this?

I don't know what more detail you might be looking for.

The details are what a person who has been abused should be exploring with their therapist/doctor.

If it helps, what I mean is that there are quite a lot of symptoms that can be caused by PTSD as well as AS. If a doctor who evaluates someone with no knowledge of the patient's abuse (a LOT of patients won't discuss the abuse), symptoms that are actually being caused by PTSD that are also common to AS could be mistaken as the result of AS. PTSD usually causes severe low self esteem. Think of any symptom of AS that reflects low self esteem.

A person who is generally shy to begin with, and then is seriously abused can display many signs of AS, as well as other disorders. The bottom line is, if you want to be accurately diagnosed, and for treatment to be as effective as it can be, the doctors and therapists MUST know everything they can about the abuse.

This helps, thanks.

One of the problems I've run into is comparisons between different conditions - such as PTSD and ADHD have a lot of overlap, or depression and ADHD's inattentive symptoms. And sometimes these comparisons are superficial ("this is what the patient presents as") without really describing what these symptoms feel like for the patient. Like your comment about low self-esteem, which seems important to mention.

Like depression and ADHD both present difficulties doing tasks, but ADHD seems to be more about getting stuck doing other things (or constantly shifting focus without settling on one thing) whereas depression seems to be more about the tasks itself being overwhelming and not deriving pleasure from or even initiating at all? Am I making sense?

Anyway, maybe I spend too much time thinking about these things.

That's exactly what I was getting at. Co-morbid conditions are so common, any and all possibilities must be considered. PTSD though, is a bit different from most others because PTSD is triggered by an event. If the evaluating professionals aren't aware of an event that did in fact happen, there is no way they can take the possibility into account that PTSD might by part of the overall picture.

If there has been abuse, it's CRITICAL that they are fully aware of it. Otherwise, symptoms that are actually caused by PTSD might be mistaken for AS or Depression or any number of other disorders. The problem with that happening is that therapy directed toward one disorder, if the disorder doesn't really exist, can and usually does cause more harm than good.

I meant specifically what the symptoms feel like for the person experiencing them and how they contrast.

Ahh, the tangled mess of memories that roam our minds.

My psychiatrist just explained to me something interesting about PTSD or any traumatic memories. She said that examining past trauma is cathartic because it helps to release and understand the emotions involved. However, on the flip side, every time you re-live an experience, you re-live the emotions, and the memory grows. It is like a wart: picking at it feels good but it is also likely to make the wart grow bigger.

That said, I was abused and bullied as a child. My dad is something of a recluse: he has a brilliant mind, he has a great grasp of physics, chemistry, and political corruption. He remembers almost everything he reads and can ramble on about it for hours. In spite of this (or maybe because of it) he is also very paranoid, aggressive and easily agitated. A favorite punishment tactic of his when I was growing up was to have me go pick out a stick to be hit with. If the stick broke over his knee before he used it on me, it was too weak, and I had to go pick out another one.

When I was probably 10 years old I came home from school to find my clothes and toys as well as my mom's clothes burning in a bonfire on the lawn. He was upset over our 'material obsessions.'

I had a best friend throughout school. Her mother was a lovely independent, free-spirited, comforting and spiritual woman. After her boyfriend of several years moved in with their family, I was no longer allowed to go over to their house or see my friend outside of school.

School was not so great either. I went to a very small school and circulated through friends quickly. I did very well in all of my classes and graduated as a National Merit Scholar. Other kids made fun of me and talked about me behind my back or in front of my face. This seems to be a pretty universal experience.

College, things got a little better but got weird with my circle of friends after I broke up with my boyfriend and a good friend started dating him. I was no longer comfortably accepted into the group, and no one wanted to see me after the break-up since the boyfriend was not taking things very well.

In my most recent relationship, I did not fully realize until after the relationship ended that he had raped me at the beginning of our relationship. I was at a party at his house, fell asleep in his spare bedroom and then woke up to him having sex with me. Because I had been attracted to him, I saw nothing wrong with this at first, but felt oddly like I had been violated. We were only together 3 months. The boy would talk about me (subtly) in front of others or describe things in such a way that he seemed to know was painful for me. He was very intuitive in this way, but instead of talking with me about my issues, he would bring them up in social settings under the guise of 'politicking.' When I would reveal any vulnerability or try to talk straight with him, he seemed understanding but would then later use it to mock me or make fun of me.

I don't get when people are gifted with a great amount of intuition and empathy and use it only to make themselves feel superior to those they are empathizing with.

If I understand you correctly, you're looking for a "list" of symptoms, what they feel like, and how they may be confused as to whether they are caused by one or the other (AS and/or PTSD)?

If that's what you are asking, I can only guess. I'm not a professional, but I do have a little bit of personal experience having had both myself, and having dealt with more than one child with both as well.

All I really do know is that this is the kind of thing that has to be dealt with on a case by case basis. It isn't the same for everyone. PTSD can be just as much a spectrum as AS. As such, the specific combination of symptoms, some of which may be coming from both AS and PTSD, some of which may be coming from only one or the other, and some of which may conflict, coexist, and/or cause some confusion as to which is caused by what, is unique to each individual. It really has to be explored with a therapist. I'm sure even then a lot of that is educated guess work. I do think the better informed the patient is, the better the results will be.

I can offer one example of what I mean.

Depression. If the patient suffers from both PTSD and AS, and is depressed, the question becomes, "Is the patient depressed as a result of a trauma, or as a "side effect" of dealing with life with AS? Or both? And/or is the patient suffering from clinical Depression?"

Some other examples might be:

If the patient consistently avoids eye contact, is that a result of an ingrained AS trait, or is it from low self esteem brought on by trauma? Or both?

My mother was extremely animated when I was very young. At some point, she suddenly began to speak in monotone, with an odd accent. That happened a long time ago, and nobody ever got to the bottom of why. Many years later she was diagnosed with Bipolar. Looking back on what I remember of her consistent behaviors, I think it's entirely possible she may have had AS, and that treating her for Depression may have thrown her off track. We'll never know now because she passed away six years ago. I'm not a doctor and never learned everything her doctors did, so I'm not wasting a lot of time trying to come up with an amateur posthumous diagnosis.

I have spoken with her Psychologist of over twenty years though, since her death, and he agrees it is altogether possible that her symptoms could conceivably have been misdiagnosed. He also agrees that IF they were, the therapy she received for what everyone thought she had, could have driven her in the wrong direction, worsening her "real" condition(s). He and I DO both agree however that this is all mere speculation, but given some of my, and my children's histories, is worth speculating on.

My main purpose in bringing all this up wasn't to inform anyone on any specific symptoms that could cause confusion between AS and PTSD though. My main purpose was only to stress the importance of revealing as much as possible to our doctors. The more they know, the better informed their diagnoses are.

If we have PTSD due to abuse (especially sexual abuse), there is such a stigma associated with it many of us DON'T want to talk about it. If the abuse happened decades ago, we may make the mistake of thinking it isn't as important as it actually is. I, for one, WAS abused as a very young child. I thought I had dealt with it. I thought it wasn't all that important four and a half decades later.

I was wrong.

My abuse had many long term effects I wasn't aware of until recently. I HAD PTSD for a very long time, and didn't realize it. I have managed to deal with the issues, and no longer have PTSD, but do have several physical symptoms that arose due in part to PTSD, in part from AS, and in part from ADD. The ADD factor is still there in full force. The AS factor is there in full force as well, lesser than ADD, but with some odd conflictions between the two. The PTSD is now pretty much gone out of the picture.

I think the potential combinations of conflicts, contrasts or whatever you want to call them, I believe are practically infinite. The important thing is that the doctors KNOW about as many possibilities as they can know. If there are reasons in existence for any of our behaviors that they do NOT know of, the treatment path could end up being non-effective or even more damaging than the actual disorders.

Gwen and xemmalie... if you are or have been or THINK you are being abused in any way by your dad and you still live with him do not hesitate to seek help and protection... the worst thing of abuse situations is that when its done within the family its very hard to get help from within the family since they are usually under the aura of the same abuse.

Regardless of whatever hold the abuser has over you...he will have no power over an outsider who has the authority to intervene. This can be a counselor in your school to simply talking to a police officer... these people can and will mobilize a lot more power and resources than the abuser can handle. The one thing abusers fear the most is their victims talking... as long as you remain silent and do nothing it will never stop (i'm sure you know this).

Last edited by Dantac on 23 Jan 2011, 3:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

No, I wasn't asking that - but I certainly sounded like I was, so no worries. I was trying to work something else out and I'm not even sure how to put it into words right now.

However, your answer was helpful, thank you much for writing it.