Editor’s Note: The Invisible Scar does not offer professional advice, only opinion.
Here’s a look at the most common questions popping up in my inbox lately and some thoughts regarding them.
My younger siblings live at home, and they’re being emotionally abused by our parents. What can I do?
Call the Childhelp National Child Abuse hotline, and talk to a qualified crisis counselor about the details of your situation. By calling, you are not immediately reporting abuse—so don’t be afraid of calling. You will be able to ask the professionals there about the best way to handle such an issue.
In addition to what the professionals might tell you there, I’d suggest doing what you can to love, support, and nurture your siblings as much as possible.
For example, if your parents are neglectful, you can reach out to your siblings and just listen to them, hug them, show them that someone in this crazy big world loves them unconditionally, encourage their (healthy) interests, etc. Or if your parents tend to be overly critical of your siblings, you can make time to talk to them in an encouraging, soul-building way,
Say your siblings love to draw or paint, then encourage their art, take your siblings to art shows, give them books about art, look at the art they produce, listen to their talk about art, etc.
The heart of an abused child starves for attention, for acknowledgement, for love…. and if the abusive parent does not offer that, the child will often turn to other people and things… Be that trusted adult that your siblings can turn to.
Know that one person can make a tremendous positive difference in a child’s life. This article by Josh Shipp discusses the power of a trusted adult in a teen’s life. I’m not familiar with all of Josh’s work, so I’m not fully endorsing—or not endorsing—his work, but that article’s worth a read for people wondering how to help emotionally abused children in their lives.
Moreover, myriad adult survivors of emotional child abuse are alive today and on the path to emotional health because one adult in their life cared about them. Those trusted adults were coaches, teachers, librarians, neighbors, etc., that took the time to see the child, to listen to him/her, to let that child know that he/she matters. They weren’t creepy or overly fawning adults; they were adults who could be trusted, who could be like a beacon of light in the child’s dark childhood.
Those people made a huge difference. You can, too.
How can I make my parents’ stop abusing me? They are always gaslighting me, making fun of me, and making me feel awful. But then sometimes, they’re nice. How can I just make the abuse stop?
You extract yourself from the relationship. You get the hell out of Dodge.
Your parents choose to abuse you… Now, you choose to get out of the relationship and create some space for yourself.
Whether that decision is permanent, only you can decide. But until the abusive parent shows remorse, apologizes, and exhibits a sustained (read: for a long time) change of improved behavior, the adult child should stay away and get emotionally healthy.
“Improved behavior” doesn’t mean that your abusive parents are nice to you now and then. They should always treat you with respect and love. “Normal” parents drop the ball here now and then, but they are good people who have a bad day—in contrast to abusive parents who are mostly bad people who have good days.
Many truly awful human beings have their moments of being charming and sweet and engaging. Many abusive people have sparkling, loving sides that fool people. But emotionally abused children know that any good moment with the abusive parent will be outweighed by the many, many, many terrible moments. And yet somehow, the abused child will focus on the brief glimmering moment of good and try not to think too much about the bad.
Don’t let yourself get caught up in looking at those rare pretty photos in your memory and avoiding the giant gaps in between them. Keep your eyes wide open. Walk in the truth. Don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself and to pull away from abusive people.
I want to go No Contact with my parents, but I don’t know whether blocking their number or not answering their phone calls is too extreme. Do you need the permission of the other person to let go? What happens if they don’t let go of you?
If you want to go No Contact with parents who are toxic to you, then do it. And, yes, going No Contact means to not allow them into your life… which means blocked phone numbers and emails, etc.
“Going No Contact is not an attempt to change a person or to teach them a lesson,” states the Out of the Fog website. “If it were it wouldn’t be No Contact but a bluff and an ill-advised one at that. Going No Contact is more about protecting yourself and letting go of the need or desire to change another person.”
You don’t need anyone’s permission to go No Contact. The best part of being an adult is that you get to choose who to have a relationship with. Familial ties, circumstance, office environments, etc. can put people in your path, but you get to decide whether to socialize with any of them. You get to decide what is best for your emotional health.
You have the power to say…
- “No, I no longer want this toxic person in my life.”
- “No, I do not want to be an emotional punching bag for this person anymore.”
- “No, I will no longer put myself in the path of an emotional vampire.”
- “No, I will not give my time and energy to someone who will turn on me and treat me like shit.”
You have the power to say…
- “Yes, I matter, and I have a voice.”
- “Yes, every person is precious to God, and that includes me.”
- “Yes, I have the right to live a life free from someone else’s toxicity.”
- “Yes, I can and will choose how to spend my time and energy.”
- “Yes, I will choose friends who are loving and kind and supportive and not toxic.”
The finer points of going no contact are explained well by this article from Out of the Fog organization.
And remember: If someone armed to the teeth with daggers to wound you, bared teeth to rip you to shreds, and a mind determined to hurt you came to your front door, would you open the front door? No, you wouldn’t. Now, if someone is hell-bent on hurting your soul in that way, why would you let them in?
How can I get people to see me as okay and that going to NC was the best thing I ever did with my life?
The above question comes up a lot in my inbox. A whole lot.
Here’s the truth of the matter: You can’t make anyone understand you and sympathize with you… You can’t make anyone really get it, and few people do. Most people have loving, kind, and well-meaning parents, and they cannot see how any parent would be as hurtful and destructive as yours.
They are fortunate.
But you, dear reader, have had a different sort of childhood. And some people just don’t get it. That’s all right—you don’t have to explain yourself to them.
Your gift to yourself—and you deserve this—is a more peaceful life, without your abusive parents’ drama and their abuse. And that is a huge and wonderful thing.
Live your life in the truth. Good people will see how much happier, calmer, and healthier you are in comparison to who you were. And if some people don’t, they weren’t friends to begin with. And as you meet new people who don’t know about your past and who ask about your parents, tell them that you’re estranged and leave it at that.“I’ve chosen not to have my toxic parents in my life.”
Let your life, your newer and emotionally healthier life, this honest life rid of parental toxicity, be your testimony. Praise God, you’re living an emotionally healthier life. Enjoy it.
And don’t forget that readers of The Invisible Scar understand the value of going no contact. You can always find support here in the comments or post something on The Invisible Scar’s Facebook page.
Therapy isn’t working for me. Why are you pushing therapy?! It doesn’t work.
Therapy may not be working for you for a few reasons:
- Your therapist sucks.
Not all therapists are good. Some are laughable, some are terrible, some should’ve definitely chosen a different career. That’s why it’s important for you to do your research and take time to find the right therapist for you. Know that doing so can take time. - You hate the idea of therapy… and you’re only semi-interested in your therapy sessions.
“Everyone who wants to engage in therapy can benefit,” writes Margarita Tartarkovsky in Therapists Spill: 11 Myths About Therapy. “Not surprisingly, people who don’t have a modicum of motivation to change probably won’t.” Therapy can be hard, and if you drag your feet to it and don’t open up very well, you may be doing yourself a disservice. - You haven’t gone to therapy for very long.
Healing takes time… lots of time. Be patient with the process.
Don’t give up on therapy. Don’t give up on yourself.
Sometimes, watching movies help me work through my emotional child abuse. Is that too weird?
Only one person asked me this question, but I had to share it. The question plugs into the fact that people love narratives, we love stories, we grow and learn through stories, written, told, and presented.
No, you’re not being weird.
Good movies reveal ourselves to ourselves and shed light on the human condition. That’s why watching the “Tangled” movie led to a very long blog post analyzing the narcissistic personality disorder of Mother Gothel. And why I’m taking notes about Finn from “The Force Awakens” for another article…
Onward and upward.
Veronica Jarski is founder and managing editor of The Invisible Scar, a passion project dedicated to raising awareness of emotional child abuse and its effects on adult survivors. She has extensive editorial experience and a bachelor’s degree in journalism. Her work has been featured on myriad publications, such as Kapost, MarketingProfs, and Ragan. She also is the author of an e-book about waking up to the realization that one had an emotionally abusive childhood.
The Invisible Scar 
I don’t know how common it is, but I have two siblings (I’m the middle, aka the scapegoat) who refuse to see the family wounds. Even more drastically than minimizing contact with my parents, I have had to fully eliminate my sisters from contacting me. The hardest part of all this is that my two daughters had relationships with my entire family. I’ve communicated my story openly with my daughters, and they want what’s best for me, but now they are left out. I don’t want them to suffer because I need space. I also don’t want them to experience the false compliments followed by guilt or shame that is the inevitable pattern in my family. What’s a Mom to do?
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If they couldn’t love you as they should have, they cannot love your daughters in the right way too. The danger in allowing children to remain in contact with the very ones you have gone NC with is the high risk that the innocent children will be used as carts to carry in the very poison you are trying to keep out.
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I am a 54 year old woman. I have come to the realization that I was raised by a narcissist . I am torn because I am an only child and my abusive parent is aging. I limit my contact as much as possible , but she sees me everyday. I would like to move , but I feel responsible for her.
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I’ve thought about the same thing very often, what if one day my parents need 24-hour care, then what? Do I go back into their life (I’ve been No Contact for some years now)?
Cruel as it is, my first option would be to place them in a facility, but with rates of good places going as they are, that might not even be an option for me. Then, I guess I have to have them nearby, to get them groceries, clean their place etc, but this place has to be at a distance they cannot trouble me more than is needed.
I realize that this means they will come back into my head and into my life and the peace I am finally enjoying now will end, but that will only happen if I let them. When I comes to this point, I must already have a very full life, so I have things to go to where I can forget, where I can heal when they hurt me as before. They must remain where I have placed them and not encroach into the life I have created for myself.
I must never allow them back, and return to the hell I escaped from.
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I have been in therapy for decades, having been started in it as a grade-schooler because of my parent’s divorce and my mother’s belief that everyone should always have a therapist. My mother is not actually supportive, however- she’s quite unstable and emotionally abusive, and she was abused herself terribly by her own parents. But the point is, I have an _absurd_ amount of experience with a wide variety of mental health care practitioners in a wide variety of contexts, both in treatment directed at myself and at other members of my family, and my frank assessment is that therapy is almost totally ineffective, often actively harmful, and that the people who practice it are virtually always either in denial about this or in some really frightening cases working hard to cover up how ineffective it is in order to keep making money or feeling good about themselves.
I keep returning to therapy purely out of abject desperation and a forlorn hope that something, anything, may someday be able to improve my quality of life. But it’s ridiculous to suggest that therapy- or at least, therapy as it exists professionally at this time- is usually effective. Every scientific study of psychotherapeutic outcomes points out huge holes in professional practice even among conditions that are heavily studied and well understood, and a general unwillingness of therapists to actually makes use of evidence-based research. Take this article for example: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/looking-for-evidence-that-therapy-works/
In my experience, by far the single biggest problem with therapy as a profession is the pervasive holding of the “just world fallacy”, the belief that the world we live in is fundamentally good in spite of occasional exceptions. Caregivers in possession of this mindset balk in metaphysical discomfort when confronted with the stark realities of patients’ lives. They struggle to believe that what you’ve experienced could really happen, and when they get past that, they struggle to believe that the universe would allow such wrongs to go unrighted- they tell you “Everything is going to work out, you’ll see.”, not because they have any rational reason to take that position, or because they themselves are going to act to improve circumstances, but simply because they very badly want that statement to be true, and they are unwilling to honestly confront the possibility that it isn’t, and it won’t be. And then they quietly sit there with a reassuring smile and watch your life continue to degenerate without blinking, just repeating this empty mantra until circumstances intervene to take you out of their care.
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