The Lasting Effects of Domestic Violence on Adult Children

I can vividly remember my dad yelling at mom and mom yelling back and then scuffling, and I knew it was bad.

Mom would wear long sleeve shirts, high necklines and a lot of powder to hide what dad was doing to her. But there was nothing to hide the scars of hearing and knowing that the violence produced in me.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, is one of the lasting effects the violence has on people living in a violent environment..

If I hear a man yelling I cringe and am afraid, it is like I become a two year old inside my adult self, afraid of being hit, afraid of being yelled at, just afraid. If a man should get mad and throw something, I am now lost inside myself terrified. It is my coping mechanism, I can not cope with it, I am too afraid .PTSD affect on me.

A lot of men and women see that how they were raised as normal and therefore marry a violent spouse. I have, more than one. Each time I divorced, my mom would be upset because I didn't stick it out, but she divorced my dad when I was 24, so she had enough by then, but it was like we her children were to stay in a violent abusive relationship just because we were married. I can not agree to that logic at all.

Making friends, learning trust, learning to trust your own judgments are all hard being an adult child of domestic violence. I know dealing with emotions, to even really be aware and know what I am feeling is hard for me. We did not discuss emotions, how we felt, so I never gave it much thought until my therapist kept after me with a chart to name what I felt and how I felt.

Boundaries are another issue for people from a violent home. I had no boundaries, I was like a walking door mat for people, I thought that was how you were to act when you loved someone.

Anger, that wells up and then just springs forth at the wrong time and wrong person was a problem I had because of how we lived. Dad or mom would be upset, I got the brunt of it. So, it took a while to deal with it, and I am thankful I didn't damage my children in the process of learning the correct way to parent. All I knew was I didn't want to be like my parents but so much of that stuff is ingrained that it had to be flushed out and reworked in my brain so I was not like my mom.

Regrets and wishful thinking are a part of a child's life and they do not go away once you are an adult unless you were able to get help as a child to resolve the conflict domestic violence leaves on a child and an adult child.

Fear is another emotion that stays with an adult child of domestic violence. Shame, also. It keeps us silent and silence needs to be broken so the cycle of violence can be broken as well.

The memory of the violence stays with you, no matter what your age, it is there, a product of how your childhood affects you even now.

Learn more about this author, Samantha Pratt-Tyler.
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