Toxic Parental Relations, Part I
Jan. 14th, 2009 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clovehitchedTonight I was watching a police show on BBC iPlayer, and there was this bit where the cops were putting someone in a cell, and the perp was resisting violently.
And so the police crossed his legs over while he was laying face down on the ground in order to give themselves time to exit the cell before he got up and came at them.
This prompted a sudden recall of something I'd forgotten about completely. I've been asked by various people, but most pertinently my erstwhile therapist, Dr Demsky, whether myfather sperm donor was ever physically abusive towards me, and I always said "no", and believed it. I got spanked as a kid, but so did all my friends - it seemed the normal thing in the 70s.
But I remember now that he used to do something else. Often, he would take myself or my brother and pin us down on the ground, face down. He'd then take one leg and cross it over behind the other one, with the narrow part of the shin pressed tight into the back of the other leg's knee.
While holding the upper leg in place, he'd take the other one and bend it back, until it reached the point where the shin was stopping the knee joint from closing back on itself.
He'd then push until we would yell in pain and scream for him to stop. He did this, I assume, for amusement. He always seemed to be treating it as some sort of game, and I just assumed that it was the sort of "rough play" that parents did with their kids.
I think it started when I was about five, maybe earlier. He did other things as well, such as Chinese burns on our arms, again until it hurt, again for amusement. As far as I can remember, this sort of thing continued until my parents divorced when I was nine.
I had completely blanked all this stuff until I saw a group of four or five police officers using something very similar (but less extreme, they didn't inflict pain as far as I could see) to restrain a violent criminal on TV.
You physically abused me. Thanks, Dad.
And so the police crossed his legs over while he was laying face down on the ground in order to give themselves time to exit the cell before he got up and came at them.
This prompted a sudden recall of something I'd forgotten about completely. I've been asked by various people, but most pertinently my erstwhile therapist, Dr Demsky, whether my
But I remember now that he used to do something else. Often, he would take myself or my brother and pin us down on the ground, face down. He'd then take one leg and cross it over behind the other one, with the narrow part of the shin pressed tight into the back of the other leg's knee.
While holding the upper leg in place, he'd take the other one and bend it back, until it reached the point where the shin was stopping the knee joint from closing back on itself.
He'd then push until we would yell in pain and scream for him to stop. He did this, I assume, for amusement. He always seemed to be treating it as some sort of game, and I just assumed that it was the sort of "rough play" that parents did with their kids.
I think it started when I was about five, maybe earlier. He did other things as well, such as Chinese burns on our arms, again until it hurt, again for amusement. As far as I can remember, this sort of thing continued until my parents divorced when I was nine.
I had completely blanked all this stuff until I saw a group of four or five police officers using something very similar (but less extreme, they didn't inflict pain as far as I could see) to restrain a violent criminal on TV.
You physically abused me. Thanks, Dad.
