Tag:

Beatings

Should I Compensate for My Past Failures?

by Daniel J. Tomasulo, PhD, TEP, MFA, MAPP February 22, 2021

written by Daniel J. Tomasulo, PhD, TEP, MFA, MAPP

From Bangladesh: I am 34, married, have a daughter who is eight years old. I love her a lot. I probably have very low self esteem and also obsessions/compulsions. In the sanityscore.com I scored 75 in self-esteem and 56 in obsessions/compulsions. Although, I am sure I didn’t answer a lot of questions correctly.

I graduated in 2006. But for the past 10 years I was employed for only 22 months in 2 different jobs. The second job was worse than the first one and barely covered my expenses. I am currently unemployed and pursuing a Master of Science degree in IT. I have been living off of my father’s house rent for most of my adult life.

I have been abused by my parents since the age of 4. Both my parents used to beat me a lot but my father used to emotionally abuse me more. My mother expressed her love and appreciation for me sometimes but my dad never did so (except for 3 occasions) because ‘that would spoil me’. Constant criticism, name-calling, belittling, ridiculing, verbal threats was a daily routine in the name of education up until 2012. I was thrown out of home twice before the age of 12. When I was 20, I escaped from home for fear of my dad after failing in 2 courses but returned home after 3 days. I was and am very fearful of my dad. I can never speak to him normally and mostly keep silent whenever he is around, I feel like walking on egg-shells. In 2012, at the age of 30, I first came to learn what emotional abuse is. At one occasion in that year, I confronted him and yelled at him for the first and last time. The abuses lessened ever since. But I am still afraid of him and want to move away but I need a decent job first.

I procrastinate a lot. I have no friends since the age of eight. I am afraid of facing job interviews (despite having well qualifications) and making friends for the fear of being judged negatively. I know I need therapy.

I am not legally/financially indebted to anyone. But I feel I should compensate for my past unemployment by earning more in the future. Some people I know are trying to do so to compensate for their ‘forgiven debt’. Should I do it? Everyone in society seems to believe that consuming more than you have earned in life is disgraceful and nobody deserves to live on the food that he hasn’t paid for. But I don’t want to do so. I want to be happy but want to ‘deserve’ it too. But I don’t want to go abroad to earn more. I just want to live away from my parents with my family, learn more of what I love, connect with people, raise my kid and have a good life. I don’t want to pursue more money or burden myself with more responsibilities or pains than that is required to have a healthy self-esteem. What steps should I take?

Thank you for your question. I appreciate the courage it takes to write about the emotional abuse, and understand your desire to compensate. However, unless there was a specific agreement made between you and your father for compensation, I would not invest your time, energy and future in repaying something that your father needed to give. Let the “forgiven debt” be just that. It may be one of the ways your father is trying to atone for his poor parenting. Let this be.

Your university should have a counseling program on campus and it’s likely to be well equipped in helping you with social and professional skills. Make an appointment with one of the counselors. They will help you to envision a future of learning more of what your love, connecting with others, raising your child, and having a good life.

Wishing you patience and peace,
Dr. Dan

February 22, 2021 0 comments

My Boyfriend is a Complete and Utter Jerk

by Daniel J. Tomasulo, PhD, TEP, MFA, MAPP March 23, 2011

written by Daniel J. Tomasulo, PhD, TEP, MFA, MAPP

So my boyfriend and me have been dating for more than 3 years now and we haven’t been truly & deeply happy for about 2 years of it now. After the 2nd year, we started to break up then make up and repeat over and over and over again. We would fight almost everyday and he would always lie to me and never gave me the love and support that I really needed. It even got to the point where I would have to ask him to show me that he loves me and appreciates me and all the stuff that a boyfriend should already do for his girlfriend. Let me start from where I come from and who I am.

I am an Indian girl who has Indian traditional values and parents. Of course my parents did not want me dating at the age of 15 (meaning we started going out during high school) so we had to keep it a secret and we did and he was so understanding of it so much for about a year and after that he just got so difficult. I went to beatings from my dad for him and he still didn’t understand what I was going through and at the same time him and me started dating my sister was diagnosed with cancer.

I had such a hard time all my life and I would always choose him over my sister because he would always want to talk to me and stuff. I will regret that all my life and when I do bring that up when he says I have done nothing for him and all he says is that he didn’t ask me to not spend time with her. He says whatever he wants to me, calling me names, being just absolutely rude to me, not listening to anything I have to say. I still stayed with him through all of it, just hoping that maybe he would change and be better. Then the beginning of my last year in high school my sister passed away and it was the hardest thing for me, I missed school for about a month and was always busy tending to my family and parents. I am the oldest so everyone would always count on me being the strong one, and I did it well, with no help from him … 4 days after my sister passed away he started fighting with me about how we couldn’t see each other and I was always too busy and stuff. It was that time that I was scared for life by him.

He never gives me the support I need, I left for college and I am a few hours away from home while he stayed home. He wants me to text him every second and talk to him all the time and he doesn’t support the fact that I am trying to make a future for myself. I have no help from anyone and if I can’t get support from my boyfriend especially one of 3 years then whom can I get it from? We still fought every single day when I was at school, it got so bad that I would just be depressed and wouldn’t go to classes or get out of bed, I even missed a final because of how out of it I was. And he doesn’t care about any of that. I know it’s my fault for letting it get to me so bad, but after 3 years of having to be so strong, I am just tired.

Then one night when we were fighting he cussed at me and I was done. I broke up with him and we didn’t talk for like a week. Then he contacted me and I replied back and stuff and we started talking and he asked me to hang out and I did. But I told him I was going to date and I would date him too but not exclusively. I think that may have opened his eyes a little but not so much. Then about 2 weeks after I left on a month long vacation overseas where the only contact we had was through email. Then one day he emailed me something just so unnecessary while I was on vacation so I called him and at the end I told him I didn’t want any contact from him for the rest of my trip and that I would call him when I got back home. That I did, then after I got back and got settled and everything, he was trying to be all different, because I told him I’m not getting back together with him until I see that he changes and is a better person and stuff, but he was so sure that he had changed and those couple weeks of not talking just made him realize what he would do to me and stuff. I wasn’t believing it at first but after 2 weeks I got a good gut feeling and went with it and got back with him … and here we are 2 weeks after getting back together and he is still the same as before. He even just the other day told me that getting with me was a mistake that he regrets and when I told him that hurt he was saying that he didn’t mean it the way I took it, is there really any other way to take that? He tells to just shut my mouth and everything between us will be better, he doesn’t want me to bring up all the stuff he has done to me in the past because he wants to “move forward” so I should too, but he brings it up whenever he wants.

What do I do? He just doesn’t know how to make me happy anymore but I can’t find it in me to just leave him. I really do love him and I always will. But I can’t take getting hurt anymore. Please help!

I wish there was an easier way for me to say this to you. I know you are sincere when you say that you love him. But you are in love with the wrong person.

We are drawn to what is familiar, not what is better. Your grew up in an abusive home and have found an abusive boyfriend. His abuse is emotional rather than physical, but your psyche is simply choosing a modification of the abuse; he isn’t a genuine correction. There is no evidence that he is either willing or ready to change. Don’t expect what isn’t a reality. Think about it. The best he can do is tell you to forget about his transgressions. There was never any mention of the steps he was going to take to change himself.

I would strongly encourage individual therapy (check the find help tab at the top) to unravel some of the pain caused by him and in your family. You will need this support as you find a way to break away from your boyfriend.

Wishing you patience and peace,
Dr. Dan

March 23, 2011 0 comments

Sick about split with mom

by Dr. Marie Hartwell-Walker May 1, 2009

written by Dr. Marie Hartwell-Walker

My mom has 12 kids, she was a young mom.(17) I grew up with 5 different dads and a few boyfriends in between. As a kid I watched my mom take a lot of physical/emotional abuse from guys. She took a lot of that out on me, my brothers were in foster care. I had regular beatings, she had no problem letting me know I was an accident, not loved as much as my younger siblings, she’s beat me up while verbally humiliating me in public many times, to the point where my dad/her friends would have to pull her off me. I never fought back and I never disrespected her even when in my teenage years.

I was raped at a very young age by one of my “uncles” for 4 years. I always thought she knew but turned the other cheek. The thoughts of suicide started at age 7-8. As my younger sisters came along, I became the babysitter, I did not have much of a social life.

Most of my life I have justified my mom’s decisions/actions, because she was young and abused and just looking for someone to love her. I have not walked a mile in her shoes. I’m a survivor not a victim…Until recently. Me and 5 of my sisters were pretty close. We often complained about mom together, she’d tell our secrets and add her own twist, she would flirt with our husbands/boyfriends, cheat on my dad, “steal our thunder” at our important events, it always had to be about ma. Whenever I would get close to one of my sisters, she always tried to stir stuff up, that would get us fighting. She has never been supportive and even closed her door to me when I was a young mom in an abusive relationship. Through it all I have never confronted her.

She started saying some nasty, judgmental things about me to my sisters and I finally confronted her, she hung up on me so I had to write it in a letter. I explained to her that she was causing unneeded drama and was hurting her children and moms are not suppose to be like that, backstabbing, jealous, negative. That it was her job to provide trust, honesty and a positive light to her children. She wrote me back and got very nasty, instead of addressing anything I said, she turned it into a personal attack, saying I am sick, she been trying to help me since I was a kid. She pointed out all my mistakes in life and tore me down, It was obvious in the 3 pages she was really trying to hurt me.

I then told her that she didn’t protect me or my sisters from the men in her life and she has to live with allowing that, I wanted to hurt her back. We both got nasty and pretty much destroyed any relationship with my mom.

Ever since, a couple weeks, I have been sick with guilt, sadness and loss. How could I hurt my mother like that? It’s not my place to try and change her, I was suppose to accept her for who she is. I thought about calling her to apologize until my sisters let me know that she’s not so sad about it. She is trying to get them to takes sides, starting rumors about my husband trying to kiss her when we dating, telling people I am lying about getting raped and telling everyone how I wronged her. I got so mad when I found out, how could she actually tell people I was a liar, about something like that. How could she make up stories that could hurt my marriage.

I sent her another letter telling her if she didn’t grow up and stop trying to ruin my life and get my family to hate me, I was going to tell my dad she is cheating on him, in a round about way, I actually threatened to say so much her world would come crumbling down.

Now I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how I’m suppose to feel. I don’t know what I can do to fix things. I’m afraid my mom is going to lose it and come shoot me, I am paranoid when someone is at the door, but surely my mom would never kill me. She’s obviously sick, and this is how I treat her? What if she doesn’t stop with the trash talking? My mind won’t stop racing, it’s all I can think about. I really need help trying to decipher this. Please, I know you get a lot of questions and this is really long, but I feel so empty and alone and I don’t know what to do.

This is intense. No wonder you are so upset. I’d like you to notice that in your letter you go back and forth between being really angry at your mom for things you have a right to be angry about and then being apologetic and sympathetic and even scared. It’s as if you only have two ways of relating to her. You are either mad and nasty like she is or you are a scared little girl who feels guilty for only saying the truth.

I think you need to work on developing a third choice – one where you are confident that you deserve respect and courtesy and where you don’t have to be nasty to make your point.

You are not at all alone in this. Lacking that third choice is common among women who have been abused. Being limited to either being abusive or abused is how you were brought up. Neither place is comfortable. Neither lets you be the happy person you could be.

I hope you will consider getting involved in some therapy at this point. A letter isn’t going to give you enough support to make the kind of change that will lead to more happiness for you. There are therapists who specialize in helping people recover from a traumatic upbringing. Please do this for yourself and for your children who are looking to you to be their role model for how to manage in the world. All of you need to know how to take care of yourselves in that third way.

I wish you well.
Dr. Marie

May 1, 2009 0 comments