How are you feeling? And can I beat you up for that?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

TL : DR It’s long and about abuse. Not particularly well written, but it’s mundane, perhaps pointless and I though I’d share:

“Tokyo, how are you feeling?”

What a seemingly normal, perhaps even banal query in a normal household. But like Wile Coyote getting tricked into running off a cliff, the nine-year-old boy was filled with dread, instantaneously away that he was in eminent danger but that there wasn’t a damn thing that anyone could do about it.

“OK,” ventured the kid, since his day had seemed to not be anything out of the ordinary.

Whamph, or whatever sound a kick to the gut makes, knocking the air out of him. Didn’t see that one coming.

The guessing game begins. Now I have been informed that I’m not “OK.” Can I guess what my father has already decided what I’m feeling? There’s more, but take baby steps.

“Proud?” Not terribly likely but let’s get the worst out of the way first.

“Stop lying!” He takes a step forward, face contorted in rage. This doesn’t look good at all.

“Angry!” Yeah, another bad emotion.

“OK, see you don’t have to lie to me.” He steps back.

“Who are you angry with?” He slipped up, gave a vital clue. It’s a person, not a thing.

“Albert” I reply, praying with my entire existence that it’s my older brother that I’m angry with.

He grabs me by the hair with both hands, violently shaking me front and back, back and front, like a terrier will shake a rat to its death.

"DO! NOT! LIE! TO! YOUR! FA! THER!”

Each syllable is punctuated with a head jerking thrust back and then forward and then back and forth again for the next. His fury is bottomless. There is absolutely no reason left in this man. It’s pure emotions, pure rage, pure hatred at this point.

I didn’t mind the kicks. Even if one sent me down the stairs and then off to the ER. That was almost the ideal solution since it ended the interrogation quicker.

Nor the punches. Even when another trip to the ER was required for the stitches on my head from the corner of a hardwood chair.

No, it was this, the out of control shaking which terrorized this kid. It just felt like, well, like I was going to die.

“You?” I guessed.

The shaking stopped. It was him. I had been mad at him.

“See Tokyo, if you just wouldn’t lie to me, then I wouldn’t have to do that.”

The funny thing is that this kid believed that. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I found out that my father would somehow construct elaborate stories in his head and then start to believe them. So, he would have decided (1) what I was feeling, (2) why I was feeling that way and (3) why that was wrong.

The hardest part was that he would invent details from whole cloth and that you would have to wholeheartedly agree about everything, including the “fake news.”

So, skipping all the gory details of the rest of the abuse, it came out that:

  1. I was angry
  2. With him
  3. Because he had corrected me the day before.
  4. But he only did this because he was the priesthood leader of the family and God’s representative.
  5. I was worthless and a tool of Satan because I didn’t humbly accept this correction and by being angry with him, I was angry with God.
  6. God doesn’t like boys who are angry with him. Remember those kids that god sent the bear to eat? The ones mocking the prophet in the Old Testament?

So, this was all my fault and that I needed to feel bad and repent. Well, no doubt I felt bad. I did say that I would repent.

I’ve always remembered this incident. There were too many, but this is one that for some reason sticks out.

It got triggered when my therapist asked me “How is Little Tokyo feeling?” How can you explain why your body shuts down when it’s such a simple question? How can you convey the panic, the terror?

Looking back after almost 50 years, the thing which surprises me was the odd finishes to the abuse. You would simply go back to whatever. There was no one to turn to. No one to ask for comfort or help. No adults or children. Mother was a battered wife and she couldn’t help. We kids were too afraid for ourselves. Never told relatives or neighbors.

As a child, you just don’t know any other reality. It’s what it is.

2

{{{hugs}}}

I don’t know if it helps, but you aren’t alone. It’s been 40 years or so for me since my dad’s random rages stopped ending in physical violence for me. I still shut down sometimes when men shout, or get angry. There is a gut level sense of panic and a need to make things better now.

I’m sorry there wasn’t someone there for you all those years ago. I’m glad there’s someone there for you now.

3

My bolding. I’m sorry. Quite a club we have.

It’s a bite, isn’t it? Apparently the randomness of the attacks just makes it that much more psychologically damaging. You never know then the shit is going to hit the fan, over something that didn’t happen.

I tried to be clear in my OP, but all of the events which my father was attacking for, simply were figments of his imagination. He hadn’t corrected me the day before. I had’t been mad at him.

He would just dream up stories in his head and somehow they became actual memories. Then you would have to try to guess what the “facts” were and tell them with absolute certainty that his fantasy was right.

“Yes, Dad, I was really angry with you yesterday because you just corrected me with all the love you have for me, and because you are helping me return to God.”

He talked about this incident a couple of weeks later as an example of why children were wrong and how hard he was working as a parent. In his telling of it, he had corrected me about something, and I had been angry.

It was important to God that children learn how to respect their parents or they would die in the Second Coming. Oddly, his account skipped the abuse, but I’m sure he felt completely justified. The victim brought it upon himself by lying. He even pointed out that I was looking hurt when he was recounting the story and used that as further proof of what a horrible boy I was.

I still have a scar where he attacked me with a cutter and sliced open one of my fingers.

Sort of there, sort of not. It’s a long process to recovery and very, very few people get it. To give people the credit they deserve, I think that unless you are part of the club, you’re never going to really get it. Even many or most therapists don’t really understand.

4

My mother does the same, but in her case the response is to huff, puff and glare. You’re supposed to know what you did wrong, even if it was something she dreamed. Plus if you actually do something she doesn’t understand completely, she always assumes the worst despite any previous or current evidence to the contrary. The physical abuse (which it took me decades to understand counted as physical abuse - everybody talks about “hitting”, nobody mentions “pinching you black and blue”) was announced by a stormy face. She was in a bad mood, therefore I was in the way.

And any attempts at getting help figuring out why my home was so different from every other home I knew ran into “how can you complain, when you have such wonderful parents!” I sometimes think the biggest problem with abuse in the family is precisely that it’s aided and abetted by a society which doesn’t even realize what it’s doing. You don’t just learn you can’t trust the people who everybody tells you are most “on your side”, you learn nobody is on your side.

5

I’m a parent and sometimes I worry about my anger. I don’t hit my kids, but I can be a bit quick to yell. My daughter has taken to lying about things she’s done wrong, which I know is a response to my anger. She thinks if she lies, I won’t yell. But then I get more angry about the lie than the thing she did wrong and I want to yell more.

It has made me see the end of the road I’m going down, and I’m trying damned hard to turn the car around while my kids are young. I definitely don’t want to keep going down this road, because I don’t like where it leads.

I’m trying to pay attention to when I’m yelling or I feel like yelling and calm myself. I don’t always catch my self, but I’m trying to be more self-aware. It’s not easy when you’re prone to anger and frustration. But I never want to be like the parents mentioned by the other posters. I don’t want to get that way, and I have to stop.

6

Catching yourself is better than not catching yourself, but it’s one step too late in the process. Not having anything to be angry about, because in fact nobody did anything that is wrong enough to be angry about, is the point.

7

Go talk to a counselor if you can. See if you can get help managing your frustration and stress. It’s important that you can catch yourself doing this, but now you need help to stop doing it.

8

This is true. I never knew. It could be anything and I’d be flying across the room into a wall. “A bite” is a good way to describe how it feels when anything that triggers those memories now. My lizard brain takes over.

It’s only in the last year or so that I’ve realized that it’s a form of PTSD. I’m just keeping on as I have in the past.

This is very true. My dad was very active in our church and community and nobody would have believed me without seeing it.

9

As Ravid points out, while it better catching yourself than not, learning how to not get angry as often is it goal in the first place.

Have you considered parenting classes or reading books about it? One thing that many parents don’t really get is that children really have less abilities to do things, and that yelling at them is simply going to make things worse.

My wife has unrealistic expectations for the kids and then gets disappointed when they aren’t fulfilled. For example, she’s always complaining that the kids are fighting. Well, duh! They’re nine and seven. Kids that age fight. Period. The problem is not with the kids fighting, it’s with the parents’ reaction. Naturally, there are no perfect parent, and parents are not going to be wonderful all the time, but it’s important to learn more about what kids are really like and what is realistic and what’s not.

10

QFT.

But it seems like you have broken the cycle of abuse, and the dynamics within your own nuclear family are radically different than what you experienced growing up. That’s something you should be extremely proud of.

11

By “catch myself” I mean, stop the anger before it manifests in a way that my kids can see. I don’t mean, “Hey, I’m yelling. I should prolly stop.” I mean, “I want to yell at her so much right now, but I won’t.” I am catching myself before I yell or say hurtful things… most of the time.

I have already done substantial work getting to the point I’m at now… where I rarely yell. It used to be a daily thing. Now, maybe once or twice a week I don’t stop myself before the yelling. And with continued work, I know I will reduce it even more. I’m not setting an unrealistic goal of never yelling ever again. Even the best parents yell sometimes. But I’m focusing on what I say when I get upset and how I say it.

12

Good for you. I kept my sanity when my children were young by telling myself " this will pass". Kids will try every patience nerve you have. That’s their job. My middle daughter was my rebel. She was the squeaky wheel, the instigator and the liar. Some how we got through it. She is now a Young Mom and doing good. I couldn’t be happier for her. Of my 3 kids she is the one I am proudest of, because we worked really hard to get through the rough spots. My other 2 were easy, by comparison.