Childhood, Family And Teenage Torture

Most of us had an experience where we have felt that some clothes or gifts are cursed and responsible for creating the wrong events. When we are young, our thinking is restricted like we believe that clothes or gifts which we don’t like are unlucky for us. When I was young, I participated in an animal costume play that organized in my school. My dad bought me a bear costume for the play, but I wanted a rabbit costume. Though I did not like the bear costume, I wore it anyway. Suddenly, unpleasant things started happening: my performance was not good, everyone called me “BEAR, BEAR,” and laughed at me. I felt insecure and the costume became a curse for me. Now, when I recall that funny episode and the bear costume, I laugh at myself for being so silly at that time. “The Jacket,” a memoir story written by Gary Soto, is the same story about the feelings the author had when he receives a jacket. He hates the jacket’s “guacamole color [with] mustard color lining” (para.2). Soto’s jacket symbolizes his embarrassment about his childhood poverty even though he uses humor to alleviate the pain of his situation. Although I do not share Soto’s impoverished childhood, I understand the embarrassment, insecurity, ridicule and coincidences my bear costume caused.

When school was out, I would play with my friends in the neighborhood. These were kids who were not my age- some were older, and some were younger. We all had one thing in common, though- we wanted to have fun! We would throw sponge balls at the pool, play basketball at the park, or try out new videogames at my house. These were always good times.

The village of Ludlow, Pennsylvania may look like any other abandoned, small town America, but there is one thing that remains from its glory days, Olmsted Manor. This victorian mansion appears to belong in New York or Boston but it is the middle of wilderness Pennsylvania. In the cold, misty hills of Appalachia, this magnificent home was built by one of the founders of Long Island Light and Power who was one of the pioneers of electricity. Here is a hamlet is which full of my relatives and back woods people. I visit the Olmsted manor each fall on my way to the Penn State football game, were I visit my grandfather’s relatives with my Grandpa, Dad and sister. This manor was built in 1917 and includes a servant’s wing, extensive gardens and attic bowling alley where we bowl during each visit. My great grandfather worked as a watchman in George Olmsted’s tannery mill and my grandfather worked as a gardener at the manor in order to pay for his scouting camp each summer. My great grandparents were from Slovakia and immigrated through Ellis Island to this tiny village with its orange, rust

Because of the environment of the elementary school being welcoming and inviting, I didn’t experience situations where social norms were in play until at least the middle of sixth grade. It started on a day where nothing was going the way I wanted it to. All I know is that the scene of how women are stereotypically treated in society didn’t dawn on my

An abused child’s reality is different from the imagination; in the mind one can create happiness in a make believe universe. The concept of fusion between a dreamland of vision and reality could never occur in concert; two separate worlds controlled by violence; upon a whim a moment of fear could escalate, therefore, the restriction in place will, in-prison one's soul to suffocate in due time. This restricts the personality from developing and the mind from believing it possesses the power to create those dreams in reality. Several unpleasant disorders, poor choices, death, even murder, ends up happening. Every mind is different, that means every choice is different, one person will handle horrible experiences more appropriate than another,

Chronic trauma in childhood and adolescence include macrotraumatic events – physical abuse, sexual assault, physical neglect – as well as a variety of cumulative microtrauma including constant devaluations and excessive demands, lack of security, emotional abuse, neglect, and a variety of separation and losses. For this type of trauma, the concept of attachment trauma has been proposed to underline the high damage potential of these influences.

Maltreatment is defined as “volitional acts that result or have the potential to result in physical injuries and/ or psychological harm” (Crooks & Wolfe, 2007, cited in Stirling, 2009). There are 2 main types of maltreatment: Relational (happens within a critical relationship) and Non-Relational (happens within a non-critical relationship).

My dad’s ability to show love and affection was non-existent. I can’t remember ever telling either one of my parents that I loved them or hearing those words from them. I had to grow up quickly with an authoritarian dad. He expected his children to show respect to him as the father by always acting in a mature manner. My mom, at the time she was raising me, was unable to give of herself emotionally and that translated to a lack of warmth being physical displayed. I could always feel a warm gentleness that oozed from her, but she couldn’t convert that to any physical touch. With her permissive parenting style, she rarely disciplined me and she was always very accepting of any mistakes or mishaps that occurred. As a teenager, I felt like I could say things to her, but because of my anger at the double standard that was being lived out in our home, I chose to bottle up my angry words and stay quiet. That was

I have always viewed myself as being the stereotypical girly girl. This most often could be seen in my appearance. Although, my hobbies and interests as a child and into my teenage years would have probably made you think different. I liked to get dirty, go outdoors, roll around in the mud, and dissect dead animals. However, I also spent a large amount of my earlier years breaking into my mom’s bathroom and stealing her makeup and playing dress up in all of her clothes and then later mimicking my sister as she started to experiment with her appearance. If you fast forward into the present I have become a little bit more “girly” in my personality and appearance. I have given up much of the hobbies of my earlier years and traded it in for school

Growing up in a household where abuse ran uncontrolled, dismissive of all human affection, has left me with a recollection of memories that refuse to leave like a cruel stain on a shirt that resists fading. The furthest memory I can recall is back when I still lay in a crib and wore a diaper, I was about a year old. I had been woken up from my sleep by my father. He had not yet lost all his hair, and sported a greying moustache which would be lost as I grew older. He had decided to wake me up by beating me.

Along with Country Club Drive and the wheat field and the large window came a small neighborhood, built like two boxes that fit perfectly inside one another. The smaller box held six houses, each ending in a shared backyard where property lines were identified by the edges of playsets and small aboveground pools. The larger box was separated from its smaller counterpart by asphalt roads, with two roads leading out of the neighborhood like two arms sprouting out in different directions, one toward the community college and the other toward the prestigious golf course in town. On one side of the larger box was my new house, backed by rich farmland, and on the other side a beautiful red-brick house, set against a protected bay of Willmar Lake. And in that house lived Carrie Bell, the youngest child of a general surgeon and a gerontologist. But I did not know that yet.

Memory is the blueprint of an individual’s growth and development. Experiences that are repeated are often taken for granted, such as learning to walk and learning to speak and write to express oneself, become encoded to ensure a smooth flow of information that help us adapt to the environment (confusing sentence). However, children’s exposure to environmental stressors, depending on the exposure frequency and intensity, may impair the normal development of memory in children. This paper will evaluate the role of child maltreatment in the changes of children’s memory function. In addition to exploring the effects of maltreatment on the physiology of the primary brain structures that are involved in the functions of memory, the paper will also

This poses as a huge bombshell to some because they value family so much. It can become hard to believe that those so close to us, who are supposed to love us, can do so much damage. The thing about about abuse is the factors are not always visible. The abuser may be depressed, or have other mental health issues, possibly

Although, I didn’t have the vocabulary to express all my feelings and thoughts, I began recognizing a wrongness between my parents at 4 years old. Growing up with fighting parents, I adopting the idea of personal responsibly because I decided at a very early age that it was my parents own faults they won’t happy. Reexamining the 4 years old’s termed wrongness between my parents in my teenage years, I assumed my parents couldn’t navigate their own feels or they didn’t have the capacity to react positively to the stress within their relationship. Additional evidence, the strain relationships they also had with their own broken extended families at the time showed they both lacked the skills of cultivating and sustaining most close long term relationships. However, my parents both did have longevity in their friendships. My parents broke up when I was six, my mother moved my younger siblings and I constantly after the separation. I attribute my easy acceptance of change to the fact that change is the opportunity for something better, as a child I didn’t have the option of changing my environment from the places I’ve lived in with my mother and various male strangers besides running away for a short time before hunger or my siblings brought me back. The chaotic lifestyle from 6 years old until I was 18 years old, encourages me as an adult to love myself before anyone else. My mother spent years putting herself down, I would never want my children to watch me suffering in my own unhappiness while struggle to care for them then eventually breaking down at times leaving them with no

So it began. She had me pose in front of the red and yellow flowers that sat on the old, brown table, just outside our front door. The pristine white of the railing glowed to my right. I was wearing the closest thing my mom could get to a school uniform. It was an ill-fitting, plaid-blue dress over about three white shirts, the outermost of which had long, hot sleeves. I hated how the awkward dress felt scratchy on my legs and how my stockings were far too tight. My frizzy, brown hair tickled my neck. I hated that I felt every layer of fabric as it pushed the dress out. I could tell it made me look like a blueberry. I just knew