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Life went on like nothing ever happened for little Tina although the sexual abuse was still happening regularly as if it was as normal as taking a bath. Baby Mary was born. Little Tina now had a baby sister to play with. It is 1971. It was warm enough for Tina and Mary to dress light in short sleeves and shorts.
It was a nice day for a visit from Aunt Linda and the baby cousins.
Aunt Linda arrived in the afternoon. Aunt Linda dropped little Christina and Baby Tommy off at the top of stairs on the second floor. She didn’t drop the baby off in the kids’ room but just at the top of the stairs and then mommy and Aunt Linda went off to have tea and talk.
It wasn’t long before Baby Tommy, wearing nothing but a diaper and one of those snapping T-shirts started climbing down the stairs. No shoes to give him balance. Little Tina started calling out for the adults. The baby is going to fall! The baby is on the stairs and he is going to fall, she called out. The adults dismissed little Tina. They told her not to worry.
Little Tina could see how awkward he was on the stairs and it was obvious to her that he was going to fall down the stairs even though she was only four years old. She tried to coax the baby off the stairs to go play with the toys where it was safe.
The baby just said “I want my mommy” and continued to try to climb down the stairs. Little Tina kept calling out for the adults to get the baby off the stairs. Little Tina was feeling some serious anxiety and was feeling quite helpless as she worried about the baby’s safety.
Little Tina didn’t understand what she was feeling and why but she knew something bad would happen to the baby if he fell down the stairs. She knew he would get hurt.
About 4 stairs down, the baby’s hand slipped off the railing and he fell down the stairs. Little Tina tried to grab his T-shirt but it slipped through her uncoordinated little hands.
The baby tumbled down the stairs. Tina screamed with freight and horror as the baby tumbled down each of the stairs until he landed at the bottom. A few seconds after the baby landed on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, the adults were there and his mommy picked him up.
Aunt Linda blamed little Tina for the baby falling down the stairs and accused her of pushing him down.
Little Tina was overwhelmed with feelings of betrayal, misplaced guilt, and shame. Just another reminder that she must be bad and somehow caused that baby to fall when all she did was call out for the adults.
Little Tina didn’t know any better. All she knew was the message that she was sent that day. That she is bad and didn’t know why.
Hypervigilance about Danger
As a child, I learned things from experience. I believe most kids learn from experience. As I recall in my child development class, children learn from play through their own creativity and interactions with people and objects.
These little experiences that shouldn’t have been traumatic for little Tina became traumatic because of how the adults handled the situation. Instead of taking responsibility for their poor parenting choices such as my Aunt Linda choosing to place the baby at the top of the stairs instead of inside the room or better yet, downstairs with her since he was so young.
Because I have trauma from this situation, I also learned a valuable parenting concept of not putting your child in potential danger such as at the top of a stairway.
I became hypervigilant about danger. In fact, I wouldn’t put my baby on the second floor without being right there by his side. In some ways, this is one of many incidents that caused me to be a hypervigilant mother who was very protective of her children.
It isn’t healthy for the kids although they are less likely to die from negligence.
What it takes to put things in perspective
I was a very neurotic mother when I finally had my own kids and I carried this misplaced guilt and shame for most of my natural life and it did affect my parenting. What it took just to begin to put this in perspective for me has been many therapy sessions and doing my homework.
If you don’t do the work nothing will change. I’ve been putting this in its place by putting the guilt and blame in the rightful place by looking at it from a more accurate perspective.
My Aunt was the adult who carelessly placed her baby in potential danger. not me. I was only a small child. A preschooler. A preschooler who knew that babies don’t belong on the stairs because it is dangerous. I did what I should have done. I called for the adults.
The adults chose to dismiss my cries for help. Because Tommy was Aunt Linda’s baby, it was her responsibility to ensure his safety and she is the one who failed. I had to put all that in its proper place in order to redefine my own value, worth, and self-view.
I was carrying guilt and shame that never belonged to me because Aunt Linda made me her scapegoat to avoid her own feelings of failure in parenting at that moment. She shifted the blame onto a four-year-old child to avoid feeling the shame and guilt that was rightfully hers to feel.
Developing a Self-View after Trauma
The takeaway for me in this story is to always take responsibility for my own contribution to any situation (my own actions and no one else’s) and be careful not to take on the guilt and shame that doesn’t belong to me.
I’m not Jesus Christ and should never be expected to take on the sins of the world. Through therapy and lots of inner work that Carl Jung called “Shadow Work”, I’ve been able to come to the realization that just because someone else tries to transfer the guilt and shame of their deeds on to me, I can enforce my boundary by redirecting the focus and putting it where it belongs.
If it’s me, then I need to reconcile with myself and my guilt and shame for what I’ve done or said. It’s a recognition that no one is perfect, not me, not my parents and not Aunts and Uncles or anyone else for that matter.
Through the healing process, I’ve learned that I’m actually a pretty good person who understands that we all make mistakes, it’s definitely acceptable to make mistakes as long as you take responsibility for them and at least try to repair whatever damage you caused.
I learned to watch out for others who will try to escape their own responsibility by shifting the blame on me or others to avoid their own pain.
What I learned through these types of experiences that contribute to my CPTSD is my view of the world.
It is a place where you can’t trust people because they don’t take responsibility for themselves.
I felt bad about myself because I’m told that’s what children do. They internalize those messages as the child itself is bad. That’s what the adults teach the child as they are developing their own self-view.
My self-view became construed into something I wasn’t. Experiences like these took away my self-confidence too.
It’s only been since I’ve been in therapy as I slowly put these things into its proper perspective that I am able to recognize my value and worth as a person. This is because I was devalued whenever a family member wanted to be absolved of their sins. They put it on the child who wasn’t capable of defending herself.
They put it on me when I was too young to understand what was happening. I hadn’t even developed my own personality and self-identity yet. My self-identity was affected the most in this circumstance.
I learned through self-inner-examination that I was a compassionate human being with love and kindness in my heart. Not only was I still experiencing ongoing sexual abuse at the time this event took place but now it’s escalated to me, The child, being a family scapegoat to bear the sins of the family.
I believe it was because of the sexual abuse they allowed to continue that selected me as the scapegoat. Or maybe it was because I was smart and I was asking questions that disrupted the family facade.
I still think human beings are all monsters at this point but I continue to work on my worldview. Well, my view of humanity and all of its horrors. CPTSD is an ongoing healing journey.
I look toward the future, not toward a perfect life but with hopes of being able to relax and just be able to sit and feel safe while enjoying a healthy relationship with someone I love and can trust.
