Attachment Disorder: Age of onset?

[why]

Hello, been a looong while.

I think I have pinned down the reason for my depression/anxiety problems, and why I am still having problems dealing with grief of my parents, etc. I have been reading up alot on abandonment and attachment disorders. I think that's it! It seems as though I have been described to a T. I know I can't diagnose myself, but I will present it to my new therapist. Although I would like to ask...

They say the "onset" happens within the first two years of life. If I truly do have attachment disorder, it would have started when I was 3 1/2. I know....nit picky, but is that out of line?

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Re: Attachment disorder: Age of onset?

No, I don't think it's out of line.

 

[why]

Re: Attachment disorder: Age of onset?

Thank you Dr. Baxter. Strangely I feel incredible relief!!!

 

[Sonya]

I remember my first day of first grade. I stood on the steps and cried and cried and clung to my mother for dear life. Why? Why was I not like the other kids, talking and laughing, happy to be at school? I spoke to none of my classmates.

I sat in fear that when school was out, my mother would not be at home. I raised my hand and asked to go to the restroom. I walked down the hall. Not to the restroom, but out the back door and walked 5 miles to my house. I was barely 6 years old.

When I got home, I knew my mother would be mad, so I sat in the woods in the backyard until the school bus drove by. I then went into the house as though I had been at school all day.

My teacher called my mother and told her what happened. The next day, she dropped me off at school again and dared me to leave.

I raised my hand to go to the restroom again. This time, my teacher asked one of my classmates to go with me. I walked by the restroom again and went out the back door and walked home.

My teacher called my mother again. The next morning, instead of taking me to school, my mother locked me in the bathroom at home and spanked me. She left me in there all day and came in about 15-20 more times and spanked me each time.

When my older sister came home from school, I showed her my backside. It was solid black and blue. I didn't show it to anyone else.

I decided after that to go to school. I made good grades but I made no friends. I only spoke when I had to read from a book out loud in the classroom.

I cried every morning before school, but I went. My eyes were always red and puffy and the other children looked at me like I was a freak.

I cried because I was afraid that my mother would not be there when I got home. Why was I so odd? I knew something was wrong with me. My sister and my little brothers didn't hate school.

I was incredibly shy and withdrawn. I just wanted to be with my mother, even though she screamed a lot and hit us a lot.

I stayed silent all through elementary and middle school. I wouldn't even eat lunch in the lunchroom. I would hide in the restroom until lunch was over. I didn't make any friends until high school. I felt better about myself then but I knew I was different.

My parents divorced when I was 12, and my mother did leave. She left her 4 kids with my stepfather who was extremely cold and unemotional.

Fast forward to age 25. I had to know why I was different. I knew that my birth father divorced my mother when she was pregnant with me. I went to the courthouse and ordered all of the court documents pertaining to their divorce.

In the court documents, my birth father denied paternity of my sister and I. Not really relevant. We never knew him.

I found out that my mother had 3 girls at the time of the divorce. Where was my sister that I had never known about? She was 5-years-old at the time of the divorce. My other sister was 2, and I was an 8-month old embryo.

My mother went to my Grandma's house after she came home from the hospital with me. My Grandma said that she was always trying to get my mother to pay attention to us, but she was too busy dating and going out with her friends. She said that my mother slapped my face the day she brought me home from the hospital. I was 2-days old.

I read through over 100 pages of court documents. My birth father was awarded custody of my 5-year-old sister in 1962, the year of the divorce and of my birth. My mother was awarded custody of my 2-year-old sister and me.

I found another document, which was a lawsuit against my mother by a lady whose name I had never heard. This lady was suing my mother for the child support that she was receiving from my birth father because she had possession of my sister and I from 1962 until 1964!

The papers stated that my mother dropped us off in 1962 and as of mid-1963, my mother had kept the child support money that was to pay for our food and diapers. The lady won the case and my mother had to repay her the child support. The court ordered that the checks were to go to this lady instead of my mother from then on.

I found the lady's name in the phone book and I called her. She remembered my sister and I very well. She said that our mother dropped us off at her house (her daughter and our mother were friends). Mother asked her to babysit and then she never came back!

This lady remembered buying me my first pair of shoes and teaching me how to walk. She said that she tried to get in contact with our mother, but she couldn't locate her so she sued for the child support so she could afford to keep us. She planned to adopt us.

One day in 1964, she said a man came to get us. I asked her who the man was and she said "I thought it was your dad". My mother wasn't married then, so I don't know who the man was.

She said that she had 5 other children and that when he took us away, her children ran after us and cried "don't take our sissies!"

I finally had my answers. All the years of my mother shouting "what is WRONG with you?" in my face. She has yet to this day told me about what she did to my sister and I when we were babies.

I truly feel that I remembered being abandoned by her and that is why I had attachment disorder.

I also now know that she is an NM, who doesn't know how to love and that the care and concern she showed for me in front of my teachers and others was just that - a show.

I got in touch with my older sister. She said that her dad took her to Kansas after the divorce. He was in the Air Force and she was raised by her grandmother.

She didn't understand how our mother could walk away from her forever. I told her I didn't understand it either. We wrote for years and visited each other when we could afford it.

I didn't hear from her for a couple of months, so I contacted her ex-husband who informed me that she had passed away. I found her obituary in a Kansas newspaper.

My mother doesn't even know that her first child is gone. I stopped contact with her over a year ago because she is an evil narcissist.

She was never going to tell me about abandoning me and my sister. She was just going to let me keep thinking that I was crazy, which I did.

My other sister who I was raised with, now has schizophrenia. She was the strong one when we were kids. I think she was being strong for me but she couldn't do it anymore.

She is now in the grips of my NM, who uses her and abuses her. I have asked her to go to therapy with me but it only makes her angry.

I want so bad to confront my NM with this. But I am afraid that I might get so angry that I will do something that I will regret.

There is a lot of relief knowing that I had every reason to behave the way I did as a child. There is also a lot of anger in knowing that I might still think of myself as forever damaged had I not looked into my past and found out what she did to us.

I have moved on. I have a wonderful husband and family. I have a good job and lots of friends. I am making up for lost time. I am no longer an introvert with no self-esteem.

I just wonder if I will regret not confronting the NM in some way before she dies. I would like to make a copy of the court documents and send them to her. Just so she knows - I know.

Some people think that babies and toddlers don't remember what happened to them. I think they are wrong.

I only wish that everyone who suffers from abandonment issues could know the reason. It might well stem from something that we don't remember because we were too young but I think a baby knows if it is wanted and loved from the very beginning.