For those who grew up in horrible homes - How do you pray?

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Mirenithil

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My apologies if this thread is in the wrong forum. To the best of my ability to figure it out, it should go in a category like this one, since it isn’t a prayer request. Mods, please feel free to move this thread to the right place, with my gratitude.

This thread is only for discussion among people who were abused, neglected, or both. Especially if you were abused/neglected continuously a child, and never at any point had the experience of having a loving parent. The reason I place this restriction on this is that this kind of experience produces a preverbal, subconscious, automatic worldview of the universe/life that is absolutely alien/literally incomprehensibly different than that of someone raised in a caring home. To someone raised in the hell of neglect and abuse, your only experience is that the universe is a cold/dangerous place to be, one you have no right to exist in. You do not have the right to have needs; you do not have the right to take up space, you are never permitted to need help of any kind, and you most -definitely- have no business ever making even the smallest error of any kind. Be invisible. To approach the parents for any reason is to risk the probability of the parent being engulfed in a sudden towering rage - or to be completely ignored in favor of what the parent finds much more worthwhile or entertaining than the child. I find people who had caring parents and therefore have the corresponding preverbal, subconscious, automatic worldview that life and the universe are safe, tend to be completely unable to grasp what it’s like to not have that and as a result tend to blow off or trivialize as silly those people whose deep preverbal experiences of life are that it is not safe to exist in.

So. Yes, fine, we are no longer children, and we no longer live in the black and gray hells of our childhood homes. The problem though is that the thick, heavy lessons of fear and worthlessness keep coming back and manifesting in a seemingly endless array of different ways. And just when you thought you finally had the thing beat… back it comes…

In this particular case, the problem is prayer. I am slowly returning to Catholicism after 25 years away, and I realize I’m living in my head; I read, read, and read. I stuff my head full of words all to avoid prayer as much as I can, even though my heart aches for it. -I dare not pray.- I just. I can’t. Better to sail under the radar than pray and risk getting God’s attention and provoking his sudden, fierce, and crushing rage for having disturbed him.

Those of you who grew up in hellish childhood homes, what do -you- do when these old things come up? Do you have any tricks? Is there anything you read or listen to to help? Do you have any advice?
 
Mirenithil said:
This thread is only for discussion among people who were abused, neglected, or both. Especially if you were abused/neglected continuously a child, and never at any point had the experience of having a loving parent.

PLEASE, allow those of us who love others, and God, to pray for you. Nothing you say could be silly, trivial, etc. I can believe whatever you say. I will not discuss.

Sincerely, we love you.
Praying for you,
Deb
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You are in a place that I used to be in. Maybe I still exist in it to some extent, but I’m trying to work my way out.

Physically abusive father, cold and distant mother. Both agnostics/atheists. No church growing up, no religion, no spirituality.

Growing up like that can lead to huge trust issues, and that includes a lack of faith and trust in God. Having a cold and distant mother can lead to major trust issues with Our Lady, trusting her and praying with her can be difficult, and to God as well.

Age as helped me now that I’m in my 40’s. I forgave my father years ago. He died 10 years ago, but I forgave him before that because he made his peace with me. He sought my forgiveness and sometimes, that’s all we ever want. To be acknowledged that we had been done wrong by the ones who did us wrong.

My mother is still alive and we talk on the phone quite often. I have forgiven her as best as I can because she’s a product of her environment and bad decisions. She worked very hard to keep the family fed when my father wouldn’t. They divorced when I was young but then it seems like her life didn’t get better. We had more money, she remarried to a wonderful Jewish man who introduced my sister and I to God and I thank him for that. But she is still bitter and has a scathing tongue.

I’m telling you all of this because the one thing that I keep talking about on other threads that has helped me so much in this Catholic journey is praying the rosary. It has shown me that yes, there is love in the world and beyond. That there was once a woman who dedicated her life to her God and all she wants is for all of us to be at peace with ourselves and others. She wants us to know and love God She wants that because it’s what God wants who showed her, and us, through his Son and the Holy Spirit. There is hope and love out there.

If you love reading (as I do), read the mysteries while you pray the rosary. It is more structured and I seem to pray better with structured prayer that I read. Otherwise I get tongue-tied.

My prayers and thoughts are with you.
 
Make a choice to pray, and hold yourself to it. Ask God for the infused virtues of Faith, Hope, and most of all Charity. If you make the choice to stick to it, no matter how you feel about it, God will provide healing graces. Often this is a process so slow you don’t even know it’s happening until you look back at a decade of such prayer and see how far you’ve come. I would attend daily mass, even if for any reason you can’t receive; pray a daily rosary, and daily meditate on what a parent ought to be. Meditate for about 15 minutes on how that is revealed in God our Father and Mary our mother, and then close by making an act of forgiveness for those who have wronged you, as well as acts of Faith, Hope, Charity and Contrition.

Finally if there is a good and holy priest in your life take your concerns to him, and follow his advice.

In Christ,
Iggy
 
I had a father who, in his own words on the night he died, and appeared in my room, “I’ve been an absolute mongrel to you!”.

I can’t say all my home life was hellish. My mother was pretty good, although I feel somewhat negative about one aspect. Likewise my sister, although she could be pretty blunt at times. So it wasn’t all negative.

But my father deliberately set up to destroy my confidence. He admitted it the night he died.

And left me with a lot of problems, which have impacted on my vocational or career options more than anything else. Some other people have made it harder since then as well.

As for praying, right now the difficulty I have is seeing God as Father, or if you like, a positive Father. I had a pastor whom I regarded as a spiritual father, but even he discouraged me pretty badly, by his own admission. So I had a mongrel of a natural father, and a badly discouraging, if wise and prophetic, spiritual father.

Oddly enough one of my natural father’s predictions when he appeared in my room was “You’ll meet a pastor. You’ll think he’s great, but all he’ll do is to discourage you even more!” The pastor apologisied to me rather late in the day, and about 12 years after my father’s apparitional prediction, with “I owe you an apology. You needed encouragement, and all I’ve done is to discourage you even more!”

I then reminded him of my father’s apparition, which I’d told him about previously, but pointed out he’d just quoted my own father back to me almost word for word. He was shaken by that, and admitted, “You really did see your father that night!”

But to get back your question -

Result - I don’t like God much, since as far as I’m concerned, His Fatherhood is a reflection of their combined efforts.

Now, having said all that, I’ve had a fair few spiritual experiences. So I know He’s there. I also know that everything I do, say and think is seen by Him, so no surprises there.

The problem is coming to grips with this sense of intense frustration with a lifetime of bad choices behind you(?) partly as a consequence of the poor treatment you received. The other part is this sense of a Father God whose only interest is humiliating you even further.

If I were you, I’d tell Him how you feel, warts and all. And if you’re angry at Him, say so. He’s big enough, filling out the universe and all that, to cop a bit of abuse from one little human cosmic speck of dust whom He didn’t do much to help just when you needed help. Right?

He won’t hit you, or slap you, or anything else.

In fact, as a starting point, far from having to feel his wrath threatening you, the first thing you might have to do is to forgive God.

As I said, I don’t like Him much a lot of the time. He hasn’t been much help a lot of the time, and He knows full well just what I think, because I’ve told Him.

Tell Him how you feel, and get it off your chest.
 
I just pray. It’s only God and Blessed Virgin I really feel comfortable talking to. I can no longer feel many emotions in my heart, and I pray that despite being unable to feel love I can still be an instrument of God’s love. I don’t think that even if God healed my body that I would make a good father. I am just too unemotional.

Parents, if you do not care for your kids, they become scarred for life.
 
No tricks, no tips, justnwhite-knuckle it and shake my head and sigh when well-meaning people say Pray harder or Contemplate the love of God.

No one who hasn’t been there, done that has a clue.
 
THANK YOU, everyone who has responded. It’s going on 3:30 AM here, and I’m well past my bedtime - but I will re-read posts and reply tomorrow.
 
Sailor_Kenshin said:
No tricks, no tips, justnwhite-knuckle it and shake my head and sigh when well-meaning people say Pray harder or Contemplate the love of God.

No one who hasn’t been there, done that has a clue.
Click to expand...
And your post is helpful? Complaining about others who HAVE been there and done that or just plain want to help in any way they can? If you can’t come up with with something helpful, why did you bother posting?
 
Sebrina said:
And your post is helpful? Complaining about others who HAVE been there and done that or just plain want to help in any way they can? If you can’t come up with with something helpful, why did you bother posting?
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Did you bother to read my post?
 
Sebrina said:
And your post is helpful? Complaining about others who HAVE been there and done that or just plain want to help in any way they can? If you can’t come up with with something helpful, why did you bother posting?
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I understand exactly where he’s coming from, and he has summed up very neatly what it is like to be offered well - meaning advice by those who know nothing of one’s experience.

Yeah, I know some people are full of answers. Trouble is, they dont know the question!
 
I forced myself to pray when I didn’t ‘feel like it,’ as many people often suggest. The result is that it burnt me out.

I can still pray for others and will. People naturally want to help or offer advice. But often there are no easy solutions.
 
Mirenithil said:
My apologies if this thread is in the wrong forum. To the best of my ability to figure it out, it should go in a category like this one, since it isn’t a prayer request. Mods, please feel free to move this thread to the right place, with my gratitude.

This thread is only for discussion among people who were abused, neglected, or both. Especially if you were abused/neglected continuously a child, and never at any point had the experience of having a loving parent. The reason I place this restriction on this is that this kind of experience produces a preverbal, subconscious, automatic worldview of the universe/life that is absolutely alien/literally incomprehensibly different than that of someone raised in a caring home. To someone raised in the hell of neglect and abuse, your only experience is that the universe is a cold/dangerous place to be, one you have no right to exist in. You do not have the right to have needs; you do not have the right to take up space, you are never permitted to need help of any kind, and you most -definitely- have no business ever making even the smallest error of any kind. Be invisible. To approach the parents for any reason is to risk the probability of the parent being engulfed in a sudden towering rage - or to be completely ignored in favor of what the parent finds much more worthwhile or entertaining than the child. I find people who had caring parents and therefore have the corresponding preverbal, subconscious, automatic worldview that life and the universe are safe, tend to be completely unable to grasp what it’s like to not have that and as a result tend to blow off or trivialize as silly those people whose deep preverbal experiences of life are that it is not safe to exist in.

So. Yes, fine, we are no longer children, and we no longer live in the black and gray hells of our childhood homes. The problem though is that the thick, heavy lessons of fear and worthlessness keep coming back and manifesting in a seemingly endless array of different ways. And just when you thought you finally had the thing beat… back it comes…

In this particular case, the problem is prayer. I am slowly returning to Catholicism after 25 years away, and I realize I’m living in my head; I read, read, and read. I stuff my head full of words all to avoid prayer as much as I can, even though my heart aches for it. -I dare not pray.- I just. I can’t. Better to sail under the radar than pray and risk getting God’s attention and provoking his sudden, fierce, and crushing rage for having disturbed him.

Those of you who grew up in hellish childhood homes, what do -you- do when these old things come up? Do you have any tricks? Is there anything you read or listen to to help? Do you have any advice?
Click to expand...
I had planned on not being here for a while, but when I saw this thread, well… hope springs eternal.
I feel that my childhood set me up for a life of battles, and misery, and my entire life, (I realized recently) has been one of survival. I have hurt many, many people in my own life (NOT physically) because of that survival mode.
I know a lot of people will say that is just an excuse, but for me it isn’t. The realization that I was on survival mode is precisely what got me to see the reason behind my behaviours, and desire to end those behaviours. If I had not realized it, I would likely keep falling into the same pattern of behaviour.
I am so glad you posted this thread, I don’t want to hide behind a veiled curtain of secrecy, I want people to know what the effects of childhood abuse are, so perhaps there will be less of it.
If survivors hide in little groups, then people cannot see the damage done, they only get a shadowy, vague, or book learned kind of idea of the effects.
I understand you want to keep this strictly for those who’ve suffered abuse and I think that is a good idea, but please keep the thread “public” or whatever it is here, so people can see we are not just figments of imagination, but real people, with deep, deep scars 😦

littlechicken
 
Mirenithil said:
To someone raised in the hell of neglect and abuse, your only experience is that the universe is a cold/dangerous place to be, one you have no right to exist in. You do not have the right to have needs; you do not have the right to take up space, you are never permitted to need help of any kind, and you most -definitely- have no business ever making even the smallest error of any kind. Be invisible. To approach the parents for any reason is to risk the probability of the parent being engulfed in a sudden towering rage - or to be completely ignored in favor of what the parent finds much more worthwhile or entertaining than the child.
Click to expand...
This is the best thing I’ve ever read to describe what it is like to live in this situation as a child. What people don’t understand is that when it starts this early, like pretty much at birth, it literally affects the way your brain develops, your PTSD is extreme and incurable. your life is full of bombs just waiting to go off. I was about 4 when I started “trying to die.” I don’t think I knew the word for suicide.
-I dare not pray.- I just. I can’t. Better to sail under the radar than pray and risk getting God’s attention and provoking his sudden, fierce, and crushing rage for having disturbed him.
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Those of you who grew up in hellish childhood homes, what do -you- do when these old things come up? Do you have any tricks? Is there anything you read or listen to to help? Do you have any advice?
Click to expand...
I couldn’t pray to God the Father at all. I finally did find a prayer I could say but I’ve lost it. However, this is my experience and advice: first is to realize how incredibly angry you are at God for allowing such horrible things to happen to an innocent child. Someday, you will be able to yell at Him, I hope. Second, read Saint John’s Gospel. A lot. Third: develop a relationship with the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is your Comforter and Advocate. The gentle dove that brings the Peace and Healing. Pray to Saint Michael the Archangel to defend you in your battle against what was put into you when you had no defense: the terror and rage and infinite sadness.

You don’t have to pray a petition. You don’t have to pray a Rosary. Remember what Mary did while Martha was serving: she sat and listened. Go find a 24 hour Adoration chapel and sit there. Don’t do anything. Just be with Jesus.

Remember that God is really not something we can fathom hardly at all. But in spirit God is Light, healing and warm and welcoming and safe. Can you imagine a place you can feel safe? Something you make up for yourself? I used to have a place like that. Sit in an Adoration room and if you must fill your mind, fill it with that place you feel safe. Or imagine the Holy Spirit filling the room with healing Light.

You don’t have to say a word. You don’t have to think a thing. God already knows what you want and need. You can’t draw attention to you because the Holy Spirit already knows. * It was the Spirit that brought you back to the Church.*

Lastly, most importantly, go to Mass as often as you possibly can to receive the Lord. Daily if possible.

When we yearn for love and peace, we are yearning for God. Just yearn.
 
Bob_Crowley said:
In fact, as a starting point, far from having to feel his wrath threatening you, the first thing you might have to do is to forgive God.

As I said, I don’t like Him much a lot of the time. He hasn’t been much help a lot of the time, and He knows full well just what I think, because I’ve told Him.

Tell Him how you feel, and get it off your chest.
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I very much agree with this. My thinking is that the OP needs to be a bit stronger in the Spirit and have a feeling at some level of confidence in that assurance He won’t hit her. But sooner or later, we all need to yell at God. I called Him a lot of bad names. He repaid me with miracles.
 
As for your question about prayer. Most of the time I can’t, I feel like I’ll NEVER be good enough for God. So when I see threads on here, asking for prayer, I don’t offer, not because I don’t want to, but I feel like many, if not all of my prayers, go unheard.
I grew up constantly cringing, terrified of what might happen next. And, sigh, well, there’s so much to it I just can’t go into it all now.

I have offered my suffering up, but then I get this little thing in my head “well, that won’t get you into heaven, it isn’t good enough” and I feel as if I am trying to “cheat” my way in…

I have no advice really. The only thing I know with reason is that The Church, and Jesus are the only way I can ever hope to obtain any peace, but so often emotion overwhelms reason.

I will keep up with this thread, maybe I can find some answers here? I hope we all do. We deserve ? a break from our suffering.
 
I have three sisters and we were all abused physically and emotionally by our mother who to this day outright denies it to the point we can’t even bring it up to her. I still don’t know if my dad knew when it was happening because it was always when he wasn’t around, and we were afraid to tell him for fear of what she would do. Anyway, now I have issues of my own about parenting (always thinking I’m a bad parent even though I get praise from others) and God since we really weren’t raised in any church. The way I’ve learned to pray (and still not sure I’m doing it correctly) is I just talk to Him like I would a good friend from whom I’m seeking advice. But I don’t talk out loud, just think it because I figure that being omnipotent and all He knows. I ask for forgiveness, ask for other things like health, safety, comfort, and happiness for those around me, give thanks for the blessings He has already bestowed upon me such as calling me home to the church, my husband and children… Sometimes if I am at a loss for words, I’ll just pray the Our Father. I love that prayer above any. I say it anytime I feel compelled to do so. Anyway, I’m just saying what I do because it works for me personally. Hopefully you will find what works for you.
 
Sailor_Kenshin said:
No tricks, no tips, justnwhite-knuckle it and shake my head and sigh when well-meaning people say Pray harder or Contemplate the love of God.

No one who hasn’t been there, done that has a clue.
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That sums it up pretty well.
I’ve found that since becoming a Catholic that the rote prayers have been a huge help to praying daily. So much I don’t know what to say or am afraid of praying what I think. Even if all I can pray is a Hail Mary and a St. Michael the Archangel prayer at least I feel less guilt about my prayer life (or lack thereof). I also like the Jesus Prayer which can be helpful during a panic attack if I can remember it in the moment.
 
Sailor_Kenshin said:
No tricks, no tips, justnwhite-knuckle it and shake my head and sigh when well-meaning people say Pray harder or Contemplate the love of God.

No one who hasn’t been there, done that has a clue.
Click to expand...
I skipped a lot of thread to respond to this, but i would like to point out that I have been there. Praying more consistently, not necessarily harder, no matter how much I didn’t feel like it, and meditations as I suggested are how I got through it. If I recall rightly, how others who have been there get through it was the OP’s question.

As I said it doesn’t always seem to help as you’re doing it, but on reflection, after years of praying thusly, I can see marvelous good it has done in me. My patron St. Ignatius of Loyola has said however that one of the most damaging things a well meaning spiritual director can do is assume that what works for one should be applied to all. Conversely I would say also that what doesn’t work for one shouldn’t be avoided by all either.

Pax te cum,
Iggy

P.S. It has always helped me to know that love is not an emotion, but rather a choice and an infused grace.
 
“Pray more” or “pray harder” definitely didn’t work for me. My family wasn’t great but wasn’t terrible, but I had a very negative view of God piled on top and drilled into me. Trying to pray more just ended up feeling like a catch-22: I was afraid to pray, but I was also afraid if I missed my appointed prayer time God would hurt me for not doing it.

In any case, some tricks I’ve found:
  • Adoration. If you have a place you can go, do so. Don’t worry about “praying”, just do something appropriate. Sometimes I read or listen to my ipod (appropriate books and music, of course). Sometimes I write or draw, just putting down whatever’s on my mind.
  • Meditation. No, it isn’t just something buddhists do. I use a crucifix or medal as a focal point. Again, words are not necessary. Focus on the crucifixion and resurrection. Or another story or verse, as you choose.
  • Psalms. Psalm 22 is my favorite. There’s a lot in there that’s not fluffy light stuff - many of them are very raw, even angry. But it’s hard to think you’ll offend God with His own word!
 
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