How I Came to Distrust Adults

Memories of my abusive nanny

Some time ago I decided to look into why and how it is that I have throughout my life experienced distrust towards 'adults'. As I did this a few memories popped up in relation to avoiding and not trusting people, and many of them was from the time that I was left at a nanny the hours my parents were working. This must have been from the age of 3 to 8 or something like that. For most part I hated being there. During the first years my four year older brother was also left with the same nanny. I don’t remember very much from this time, other than some of the most traumatic events, such as being locked up in a small dark room by the nannies younger son and his friend, who were considerably older than us, as well as my brother being locked up in the same dark room. I particularly remember the frustration and powerlessness of them locking my brother up and me not being able to do anything about it. This was probably the first time in my life that I experienced powerlessness, as well as evil intent and maliciousness.

The abuse continued pretty much during all my years there, and became more and more directed towards me when my brother was old enough to not stay there. Being left there was preceded with terror and dread every  morning. The abuse escalated with me being threatened with so called nun-chucks; a martial arts weapon consisting of two sticks connected at one end by a short chain. I finally mustered up some courage to tell my  parents about what had happened, and my parents reported the incidence to the department of the municipality that deals with such matters. Why I needed courage to tell my parents about the abuse is also significant and tells me something about my relationship with my parents. Now, what I don’t get is how and why after this incidence I was still being  dropped of at the same nanny for at least a couple of weeks. When I was there after I had told my parents about the abuse the nanny was clearly and manifestly angry with me and blaming and scolding me for her possibly losing her nanny permit. What does blame do to a young child in such a situation? It obviously discourages him or her to stand up and expose abuse, since honesty is being punished. If only adults knew how much their actions and words are influencing children in their formative years, and thus are influencing the future of the world! I’ve been holding on to resentment both towards the nanny for failing in her responsibilities – I mean, where the hell was she when her son abused me – as well as towards my parents for leaving me in such a toxic environment.

Obviously this resentment is tainted with blame, and the responsibility to face and walk through this is entirely mine. So, there are quite a few points here that I will apply self-forgiveness on and walk through, so I can stop these memories from having an influence over me in my here and now.

Self Forgiveness

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to look back  at the time when I was in my nanny’s care with resentment and bitterness, thus trapping myself in an emotional hole where I am stuck  in blame, instead of looking at the events that partly shaped who I am  today in a practical manner: “this is what happened, and it lead to this  within me and manifested itself in this and this”, and in so doing taking back the authority and self-responsibility for holding on to and  giving power to these memories.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to go into  the polarity of self-blame, meaning blaming myself for being abused at the nanny, instead of seeing that I was just a random kid in the wrong place, and that it would happen to anyone that would have been there in  my place. I see and realize that the kids that abused me most likely had violent role models themselves and were acting out on the frustration they experienced – thus it was not personal, but simply a consequence of bad parenting.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to within the self-blame create and internalize a belief that “there must be something wrong with me” 

I forgive myself that I have allowed and accepted myself to use blame as a justification to not take responsibility for myself 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame the continuation of patterns on the adults that failed in their responsibility towards me as a child, not seeing and realizing that the  responsibility to face and investigate and walk through these memories / patterns are entirely mine, and that going into blame will only perpetuate the patterns and keep them having an influence on me 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to associate the ‘outside’ of the family with terror and dread, based on the memories from the time that I was left at the nanny 

I forgive myself that accepted and allowed myself to create an association with and feed the conditioning of ‘leaving home’ and ‘being  abused and let down by adults’ with my own thought processes 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to associate ‘family’ and ‘home’ with ‘safety’ and ‘comfort’, and in my mind  creating it to be a safe zone from the terror and dread of the ‘outside world’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the avoidance pattern of avoiding the ‘outside world’,  thus only reinforcing my beliefs and ideas of the ‘outside world’ as something dreadful 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use every emotion of dread and perceived failure when I’m in the ‘outside world’ as confirmation of the idea of the ‘outside world’ as dreadful

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame my  dread and anxiety on the idea of the ‘outside world’, which is only a representation in my head and not actual reality 

When and as I see myself going into dread and anxiety in relation to  the ‘outside world’ – I stop – I breathe – seeing and realizing that I  have created a polarity of ‘home’ and ‘the outside world’ as mere  representations and ideas in my mind, and that I have to walk myself  backwards and not participate in the avoidance and ‘flight’ behavior / desire that is triggered, to reverse the conditioning and free myself of  this experienced dread and anxiety 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to buy into  and be influenced by the image that pops up in my mind of me sitting in a  sofa while the nanny is standing above me and scolding me for exposing  the abuse, as well as be directed by the knot in the stomach and the  stiffness in the body, whenever there is an opportunity to expose abuse /  dishonesty / lack of responsibility, instead of supporting myself with  breathing until I stand clear and independent of any memories or  emotions so that I can direct the situation

I will continue with further self-forgiveness in the next post, in relation to avoidance and social fears. Stay tuned!