child abuse taught me social ques through adversity

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I've often wondered about the relationship between the abuse that I suffered as a child and my AS. It's complex, I think. I'm female, I tend to internalize and withdraw. My mother almost certainly is on the spectrum, and as a single mother in a (then) very catholic Ireland, she had her own problems. She didn't have the ability to help me. So the more that I was abused, the more that I withdrew into myself. If anything, I'd say that it greatly exacerbated my AS. I can't help wondering if I'd have been better able to resist what happened to me, or at least been a less obvious victim for it, if I hadn't had AS.

The combination of AS and abuse left me vulnerable well into my adult years. Probably the worst lesson that I learned from it is not to ask for help because if you ask for help then they just realise that you're vulnerable and hurt you more. For someone with AS, that's exactly the opposite of what I need to be doing.

Often ask myself if my AS would have been a lot milder without the abuse.

thank you Bob.

I am grateful to be informed of
Alice Miller's death......she was
a great woman.

Wishing you well

Chris

same. and i am confused about what in my past experience was abuse and what wasn't, now having recognized my interpretation of behavior isn't accurate.

when i had a friend recently who most certainly was abusive, it took me several years to recognize it. goes both ways. things can be very traumatic for me that might be innocuous. my interpretation is the trauma.

i go back and forth with people: is this person safe (to talk to - i.e. will not humiliate me in some fashion)? yes. no. yes. no.

forgot this bit. yes, yes. exactly.

Yeah, I can say I feel for you there.
Asking for help was what started off 8 months of abuse by a priest.
Asking for advice from my mother after the first abuse, was what kept it going for 8 months.
("Mom, Father #(* #)%#% said and did something today, and I don't know if it was right"... reply: "You have to do what the priest says, he speaks for god")

Yeah, i too wonder sometimes if AS would be different had it not been for the abuse.
But then there was lots of other abuse. I had to behave "properly" ... that's just the way it was.. and the way it was put was very... uh... convincing... I had the fear of the hell that was defined to me, and the concept of eternity I understood very well... that's cause I asked too, and had it explained over and over until i DID understand it completely. That fear was enough to make sure I did exactly what my parents and society expected of me, though I knew very well I wanted to do different... needed to do different, needed to think different. My life was wrong, and I knew the very very young.

The parents putting that fear in me was a worse abuse in retrospect than the s**t the priest did.
Heck, i'm not even sure I view what the priest did was abuse (well, it was.. but it in itself didn't cause the trauma... society's view of what he did and how "wrong" it was, was what induced the trauma... after all, i let him do it, so I was just as at fault as him )

The abuse didn't teach me good lessons, no.
There was good in the lessons it taught me, don't get me wrong... it taught me how to conform. knowing how to conform does help one cope socially. But it taught me how to be something other than who I am. It taught me to hate the self who I really was, because it was contrary to what I had to be... and if i was something other than what I was, I would have an easier time of being what I was supposed to be (and would therefore go to heaven so much easier )

By the time I was in high school, I'm not sure I even knew who I really was anymore.
I started to find it once I got away from home and went to university, and by the end of university, getting away from the forced church-goings and conformity, being exposed to something other than that conformity... getting politically involved... I don't find myself then.. but I began to realize I needed to find myself. I finished university over 14 years ago... All I can say is that I'm closer now than ever before... but I'm still searching, trying to purge the old beliefs and brainwashings from my self, so that they won't conflict with what i've since learned. To rid myself of social and cognitive dissonance.

In high-school, when the abuse from my parents started to wane, for two reasons... they started to grow up too, and because I guess they figured I was already hooked on the mumbo-jumbo crap they taught me... I started to abuse myself in the same way... they lessened off, so I had to make up for it to keep myself the way I had been taught I had to be.. and without that constant psychological abuse, I didn't feel i was capable of maintaining it... that I would revert to some evil base self.

It was very recent that I learned about AS and much of this became clear... I knew the things that plagued me. And I was working on them. But knowing WHY they plague me... I don't know, it just gives you a different perspective.

So, I can empathize with the OP, in that the abuse did teach me something, but it taught me many more negatives than it did positives. Though I likely very much viewed them as positives at the time. I missed the priest when they transferred him (presumably after figuring out what he did... cause it was within weeks that they brought in a psychologist to the school to give me a battery of tests. I used to fight regularly back then.. I think they waited till the next one, to have an excuse)

Abuse at home, and at church taught me how to believe and/or accept things, to act and behave in ways, that were in conflict with my brain chemistry. It caused so much disharmony within my mind that I know I'll never sort it all out... I'll never purge myself of the false beliefs that I forced into my head. And worse yet, not a day will ever go by that I don't feel a dire need to dedicate hours of my time trying to figure how to sort it out.

I wonder sometimes if the priest was able to recognize children with AS or other issues that made them more vulnerable. Wonder if that's how they keep it so hush hush most of the time... they know how to pick the best mark, the ones that won't spill the beans. They know how to present it in a way that keeps you believing that it's in your best interest. That it will save your soul.

I'd have gladly been his little toy if what he did was teach me how to "act" normal, but be myself.
It would've been a small price to pay.
It would've helped if society's revulsion of it was more tempered too.
But instead he taught me how to deny myself, and "be" (or TRY to be) normal, despite my reality being incompatible to normalcy.

blah... sorry for rambling on, but this thread and some of the replies put me in the moon that got me writing....
I think what it was is the sadness I feel when i see so many people on this forum talking about the abuse they lived through too... Are we magnets for it? *sigh* yeah, I guess we are, aren't we?

I guess, for a while at least, until his lessons wore off, he did teach me how to take down that sign I wear that reads "Hey, here's an easy mark, come abuse me!"

Thankx Exclavius

Your story has many parrells with mine.

I was hospitalised at age 15 with severe depression and psychosis and was sexually abused for 3 years by the consultant psycharitist.

I was so aching to be loved that I gave myself to him totally.......after years of being told by my adoptive parents I was odd, strance, insane, my loneliness and broken heart made me do anything.

The relationship I formed with this doctor was tragic, as I got so angry with him years later that I spoke out.......within days he took his life.

I have been in therapy for 18 years, and only now am I beging to find freedom from my childhood, and love and accept those parts of me I have always so tragicaly seeked others to heal me.

I still wake at night with the terror of hell, with the fear of eternity pressing into my soul.........however, I am learning well to express my anger, and to allow those tender tears to heal my pain.

We are not alone........

Thankx Exclavius

Your story has many parrells with mine.

I was hospitalised at age 15 with severe depression and psychosis and was sexually abused for 3 years by the consultant psycharitist.

I was so aching to be loved that I gave myself to him totally.......after years of being told by my adoptive parents I was odd, strance, insane, my loneliness and broken heart made me do anything.

The relationship I formed with this doctor was tragic, as I got so angry with him years later that I spoke out.......within days he took his life.

I have been in therapy for 18 years, and only now am I beging to find freedom from my childhood, and love and accept those parts of me I have always so tragicaly seeked others to heal me.

I still wake at night with the terror of hell, with the fear of eternity pressing into my soul.........however, I am learning well to express my anger, and to allow those tender tears to heal my pain.

We are not alone........

Thankx Exclavius

Your story has many parrells with mine.

I was hospitalised at age 15 with severe depression and psychosis and was sexually abused for 3 years by the consultant psycharitist.

I was so aching to be loved that I gave myself to him totally.......after years of being told by my adoptive parents I was odd, strance, insane, my loneliness and broken heart made me do anything.

The relationship I formed with this doctor was tragic, as I got so angry with him years later that I spoke out.......within days he took his life.

I have been in therapy for 18 years, and only now am I beging to find freedom from my childhood, and love and accept those parts of me I have always so tragicaly seeked others to heal me.

I still wake at night with the terror of hell, with the fear of eternity pressing into my soul.........however, I am learning well to express my anger, and to allow those tender tears to heal my pain.

We are not alone........

Thankx Exclavius

Your story has many parrells with mine.

I was hospitalised at age 15 with severe depression and psychosis and was sexually abused for 3 years by the consultant psycharitist.

I was so aching to be loved that I gave myself to him totally.......after years of being told by my adoptive parents I was odd, strance, insane, my loneliness and broken heart made me do anything.

The relationship I formed with this doctor was tragic, as I got so angry with him years later that I spoke out.......within days he took his life.

I have been in therapy for 18 years, and only now am I beging to find freedom from my childhood, and love and accept those parts of me I have always so tragicaly seeked others to heal me.

I still wake at night with the terror of hell, with the fear of eternity pressing into my soul.........however, I am learning well to express my anger, and to allow those tender tears to heal my pain.

We are not alone........

Abuse is bad. But yes, I'm sure it's responsible for any success I ever had with acting "normal".

However with my own children, I'm willing to sacrifice the instant jump-to-it obedience for the satisfaction of knowing they love me. Plus, they are really good kids, much better behaved than I was at their ages by far - and they are all multi-dimensional in a way I never was as a child.

Even the one who the court makes me allow his father to abuse, if you can excuse the cumbersome sentence, is incredible, despite some rage issues (his father has some very nasty and aggressive psychopathology thing going on, my fault for attracting the abuser to my family).

If you would not do it to your partner, a co-worker or someone on the bus, it's abuse and don't do it to a child. I don't give a good god damm what the laws are in your area. And I am not wrong.

Yes.