A Hair Pulling Child’s Perspective On Family
Filed in Hair Pulling in Children on Aug.16, 2009
Here are a few of the characteristics of the compulsive hair pulling child’s perspective on the family:
In childhood, we each felt abandoned and on our own without adequate skills or guidance. We struggled with, now how to thrive, but truly how even to survive. Our families were chaotic and volatile. It was difficult to find any sense of peace. Other family members became angry or upset if we voiced our own needs. We learned to keep them to ourselves if we recognized a need at all. Hair pulling was a way for us to deal with the chronic anxiety that came from shoving ourselves aside in this way.
September 26th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
That is just so what it was like with me. My mother was psychologically and physically abusive toward me and even materially englectful at times. She didn;t care if i was cold when she opened a window in the winter time, for example and if i complained she would lash out at me either verbally or physically. Verbally at first, physically second when i voiced she was being a bad mother to me by letting me freeze. She didn’t care when i got socially ostracized at school and actually told me it had to be something i did, when in actual fact it was just a normal experience of racism. She didn;t care if i didn’t have new clothes, ate a bad diet ( this later led to anorexia because aged 11 i was a bit overweight for my height because of what she fed me).
She gave all her love to a second husband, my step-father who was extremely insensitive, workaholic and self-obsessed and also contributing to the domestic violence and practically severed my relationship with my very loving but sadly alchoholic father abroad because she said he was a ‘ waste of space’. She has once too often since then told me ‘ You’re just like your father’.
When he died two years ago she didn’t tell me because she was apparently trying to ‘protect’ me. By then i’d not seen him for 15 years.
At home she would also often tell me to just go on the street and pull me physically by my hair
if i was being too demanding or emotionally dependent on her.
She has more than once let me know that ‘home’ is just a word on loan and not a basic human right. And that safety, love and peace are only there to be given to those who fit some particular agenda.
I hope that by coming to this site i will find peace. I’ve been pulling for over 12 years now.