This Didn’t Start With Me

It Didn’t Start With Me, It Started Way Before

I recently finished reading a great book on trauma, “It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle,” by Mark Wolynn. In this book, the author suggests that some of the trauma we experience is a repetition or reoccurrence of historic family trauma experienced up to three generations ago.

Similarities Are Not A Coincidence

Needless to say, my own life has had its share of traumatic events, which have affected me deeply on a mental and cellular level.  This thought-provoking book has made me consider the similarities between myself and my family.

Trauma Repeats Itself

The trauma in my life has primarily revolved around abandonment and lack of physical and emotional well-being. Physical as well as extreme emotional abuse has run rampant for over five generations in both my father’s and mother’s families.  Life in a religious and high-control group didn’t help matters much either, and perhaps only amplified and encouraged the already existing abuse.

We All Know It’s Wrong

My paternal Grandfather spoke to me about our responsibilities to try to change how we lived our lives and to take steps to stop some of the historically negative things his family did to its members, especially the physical violence inflicted on children. He admitted his failures and informed me that my father had also failed miserably in my regard.  As a parent, I managed to stop the physical violence that I had experienced as a kid, but I failed miserably in other aspects as a father.

Abandonment

My maternal great-grandmother died very young, leaving her husband to care for three very young children, two boys and a girl who became my grandmother. She was frequently left behind in the care of non-family members and essentially abandoned by her father from a very early age.  Needless to say, I feel like a lot of nasty stuff happened to her when she was in the care of these other people.  Her father chose to leave his daughter under the care of people in his religion and not with her aunts or other family members.

Shared Trauma

After reading the book and reflecting on its contents, the commonality of my trauma and my grandmother’s abandonment trauma is irrefutable.  This was only reinforced a few months ago in a conversation. After all these years, I wasn’t prepared to hear the hurtful words again, even at sixty. I learned to walk away. My grandmother learned to laugh. I need to learn how to laugh at it all instead.

Dealing With Trauma

Trauma catches up to us eventually.  My divorce in 2018 brought back most of the trauma I had experienced as a young boy trying to escape a high-control group.  When I left the high-control group, close family members stopped speaking to me. When I got divorced, close family members stopped talking to me. The similarities between the two events are freakishly the same.  My go-to to deal with the trauma has always been just to walk away.  I walked away after my divorce, hoping to heal. It hasn’t happened completely. I am still struggling with the feelings of abandonment I had as a boy.

It Continues

I do not consider myself a victim. Victim-blaming is a tool that perpetrators use quite convincingly to turn themselves into victims.  A self-defence mechanism of walking away from abuse has been turned into abandonment by those abandoning me. Those who refuse to talk to me have turned my silence into a lack of caring. Just like any other high-control group, it is the victim who is to be blamed for the situation, while the true perpetrator tries to paint themselves as lily white. People do not always understand the threats made from within a high-control group, and people ignore the threats or pretend to be unaware of the threats made to someone trying to rebuild their lives.

My Take Away

Whatever the trauma we are dealing with, there are ways to eradicate it from our lives.  My walking away from abuse helped me get away from a high-control group. My walking away a second time has helped me deal with the recurring trauma.

My Life Lessons

People take sides or are manipulated into taking sides.

There are dangerous and evil people in this world who seek revenge.

High-control groups are the next level of danger.