Splitting & Childhood Trauma

Warning… This post is long but significant to my “recovery”.  It contains graphic details of physical abuse of a child…..me.

When we have any type of psychological assessment, there is the likelihood that we will plunge into an abyss of emotions – hurt, anguish and self-hatred, to name only a few..  We may well be living with all these destructive emotions throughout our life, but we usually only think about one or two particular sections at a time.

I think assessments are dangerous because there is no follow up and, particularly on the NHS, someone can then wait many months before seeing a therapist again.

Until fairly recently, I didn’t have a name or any kind of reasoning for my ‘splitting characteristics’.  There has always been awareness for the ‘Jekyll & Hyde’ side of my personality and I have loathed it as much as the people or situations that I’m demonising.

My Splitting episodes usually involve everyone and everything at the same time.  The longer a distance lasts between me and whoever is being “split-black”, the deeper those negative emotions run

Of course, with childhood high on the agenda, there is currently a soul destroying splitting episode directed at my parents.  Only today, I realised the ‘good’ and ‘evil’ splitting characteristics I apply to my relationship with them.  I tend to see all of the bad and seem to forget the goodness.  If I write of them here or anywhere else, I paint them as monsters, child (physical and mental) abusers, and seem oblivious of their good points.

I’m trying to understand Splitting.  I believe understanding through education is the key to healing/conquering this ‘mother’.  I’ve been doing a little research on the net and much of it is repetitive and seems so simplistic.  However, so far, there isn’t much that looks hopeful of bringing about a change of perspective.  A couple of statements strike a chord with me. One I’ll share here, the other in another entry.

“At the very heart of BPD ‘acting-out’ is core shame, the leftovers from a childhood fraught with neglect; confusing messages and abuse, which left them doubting their lovability and true worth”

A few flashback images I regularly get during a ‘parent-splitting-episode’ are being around 5 or 6 years old.  Through whatever reasons -probably feelings of being unwanted – I had become a very unhappy, destructive and disobedient child.  My Mum, not renowned for patience, was having problems coping.  On the outside, she is your model parent, a bit of a snob, but behind closed doors, her vicious personality can erupt on a daily basis.  It was more unusual to get a few good days.  Depression seemed to be at the heart of the others.

“You fucking wee bastard, I wish I had never had you”, she would scream in my face, before beating me repeatedly on any part of my body within reach of her slipper. “Wait ‘till your Father gets home” She would add, knowing full well this thought would terrorise my little defenceless mind.

I had already had a few severe “leatherings” from Dad.  He worked a manual job and I can still feel his power today, as he would lift me off my feet, hold me down on the bed while he plummeted my bare buttocks relentlessly with his thickset hands.

He would later complain about how much this hurt his hands and then continue to tell me in detail what would happen the next time I misbehave.  It is this threat that haunts my childhood days, but oddly enough, it’s never enough to frighten me into complete submission.

As Mum starts to prepare dinner, I realise it is nearly time for Dad to get home.  My stomach is in knots and I even try pleading with Mum not to tell Dad.

“What do you think he will do to me?” I ask in a soft, almost whispering, voice.  I feel petrified, trapped, and helpless.  This will probably be the day when he carries out his threat; I’ve blown it this time.

Mum revels in my passiveness, “You’ll just need to wait and see what happens….”

I disappear to my room in terror and reach up to the door handle to shut the door tightly.  Maybe if I stay in here quietly, I’ll escape my fate.  I hear Dad come home and pray to God on my knees to be saved.

The bedroom door bursts open.  Dad’s large stature looms over me; his face looking like it will explode from the rage for my disobedience.

“The living room, NOW!”  He hollers, with a bright red face.

I shuffle past him with my little legs, he suddenly moves to follow and my hand automatically shields my face as I cower from him.  This makes his anger worse; he grabs my t-shirt and marches me up the hallway to the living room, where Mum awaits in her armchair.  Dad sits on his chair and I am left standing in the middle of the room, knees trembling, with my head bowed low.

“Have you’ve been disobedient to your Mother AGAIN?” he asks in an angry tone.

My head stays down.  I know he’s looking for an answer, an admission, but I’m too terrified to give him one.

“What did I say I would do to you the next time you are disobedient to your Mother?”

My tummy turns in fear and trepidation

“Look at me when I’m talking to you”, he shouts in his deep booming voice.

My head stays low but my eyes lift slightly, trying hard to find the courage to look at him.  He repeats the question but I don’t want to tell him that I know my punishment.  It feels a bit like handing the hangman your noose.   Maybe, by pretending I can’t remember, will buy a reprieve.  I shrug my shoulders uncertainly as there is a fine line between forgetting and lying and either could reign down punishment

His big hands smacks under my chin, pushing my head up and our eyes meet.

“I told you the next time you are disobedient to your Mother, I will strip you naked, tie you up on the bed and whip you with the leather belt until you bleed…. Didn’t I?”, he adds as a question.

He might as well be asking if I want to live or die.  Anything is possible here, my innocent mind has no trust, and there is no safety.  I imagine every child gets leathered for disobedience.  I never would have guessed it any other way.  This was normal.  It is all we knew.

I believe with all my heart that it will be happening this time, I’ve had too many escapes from this punishment.  In that moment, I hate my Mother.  I feel abandoned, deceived.  The nerves are getting the better of me.  I start to cry as my knees begin to buckle under the nervous pressure.  In that moment, I have a gut-wrenching hatred for both of them.  My shaking is as much from rage as it is utter terror.

“Didn’t I?” He screams at me again, staring angrily, waiting for my response. “Go to your room now, strip naked and I will be in shortly”, he orders me.

Without hesitation, I run to my room crying in the full belief I had reached the end of my reprieves.  I wanted so much to be away from them.  Mum used to threaten to put me in a home for bad children and I prayed hard to God that she would send me away.  But, for now, I was trapped and about to receive the most terrifying, humiliating and painful punishments imaginable to a little 5 year old.

I sat at the edge of the bed naked, shivering from cold and fear; I hardly noticed my tummy rumbling from hunger.  I can hear them having dinner.  Every step or noise and I fear the time has come, but Dad never comes.  No one does.  I slowly start to realise that I must have escaped the ‘leathering’, but I’m too afraid to leave my room and ask for food.

So, to repeat the earlier quote that took me on this journey

“At the very heart of a person with BPD ‘acting-out’ is core shame, the leftovers from a childhood fraught with neglect; confusing messages and abuse, which left them doubting their lovability and true worth”

This is the first I have ever told anyone.  I’ve had to keep myself hard throughout writing.  If BPD starts in childhood development, then this sort of upbringing surely shaped who I am today.

Maybe a Non-BPD might be able to see past these incidents and view the larger picture; it wasn’t all bad.  Largely, my sister has.  However, the problem with a person with BPD, is the ‘all or nothing’, ‘good or evil’ mentality and it is therefore difficult for me to see past the hard-handed-discipline and find forgiveness in my heart.  They have forgotten these incidents, they happened 45 years ago.  One of my quotes…

“We forget the things people do and say

But never how they make us feel”

There were many more incidents, which I will share at some point along the way.  This is what assessments do to us.  I didn’t even discuss childhood last week, but it always inadvertently calls up the memories that I would so love to learn to forgive.

I don’t like living with anger and hatred.  I detest how it lives dormant for some time and then haunts every waking hour.  I have seen my Mother once in 13 years but never my Dad.  It’s difficult to want a relationship when these horrors are still lurking in the dark recesses of my brain.  It’s even more annoying that they have no idea why I never see them and think it is all my fault.  Mum usually doesn’t talk to me for large periods of time because I won’t see her.  People within dysfunctional families are the last ones to notice, if ever at all

This post has gone on long enough, much more than I would ever usually intend.  It might put people off reading all of it.  However, it is quite an extraordinary event for me to admit, even on an anonymous situation.  It needs to come out in therapy, I can only hope, and pray this journal is empowering me to do just that.