Childhood Trauma and Disney World

[merrick]

Also, I DO cry at Wishes, so you are certainly not alone! It's a lot of emotion to handle during that show.

to the OP, i am so sorry you have lingering effects from the abuse you suffered as a child. i can empathize how it changes you and your development as a person. i am a crier, i cry at tim horton's commercials, phone company commercials, extreme home makeover, kids' movies, one direction videos (!)... anything remotely in the category of "tear jerker". i appreciate the head's up as i will probably avoid "wishes". i want to have fun and be amazed.... i do not want to be thoughtful and introspective. may be weird but we spend a lot for a disney holiday so i get to choose.

the fact that you get to provide a different childhood for your children than you experienced is a lovely testament to the human spirit. hugs to you and your family.

 

[Lovemyson]

I'm posting this here because I have wondered about it for a long time. I have PTSD related to childhood sexual abuse that I experienced pretty heavily from the ages of 5 to 13. I don't normally talk about it AT ALL, but for some reason I have felt like maybe there are other people who feel the same way as I do. I kind of feel like I didn't have a childhood, it was all corrupted. Then I became a mother really young and had to be grown up really quickly. I love my kids and I'm glad things are better now, but I struggle a lot with PTSD and depression and having to deal with a lot of dark thoughts and hopelessness.

I went to Disney World when I was 19 and I remember sitting on the ground in Magic Kingdom watching 'Wishes' and nearly crying - this was at a point where I was really suicidal and didn't feel like there was anything left to hope for. I hadn't even really wanted to go to Disney World. Just being there, surrounded by all that magic and hope, and being surrounded by all these things that appeal to childhood and belief in your dreams, it made me feel like there was this child inside me who just wanted to be able to alive again. Maybe this sounds super cheesy, I don't know. But ever since then I think about Disney World and plan trips whenever money allows and I can make it happen. I miss it when I'm not there. I feel like for that one week when I can go I'm totally safe from the outside world. No horrible relatives or abusers will bump into me there, and it's okay there, to want to be a kid again and to think of childhood in a happy light. And the planning of it and thinking about it casts a kind of happy glow on my mind that isn't there otherwise. Maybe I'm TOO obsessed with it, I don't know...I try not to talk about it to too many people because I feel kind of lame.

I don't know, I feel like I'm rambling. I'm just wondering if anyone else feels this way.

Am not going to put what happened to me and another family member.
But a great person was toll me. ( psychologist) went I give birth to my son.
No matter what or how you feel you toll hem, you love hem if you don't know how to feel or act you copied what other are doing. If you are not sure you look you self at the mirror and tell you self (You kid is all it matters)
And this is how I learned to love my self by received the more pure love from a baby, it took me few years to learn what she was trying to tell me.
I would tell you enjoy watching your kids have fun is addictive watching them.

 

[Princesca]

I did not go through what you did, OP, but I do in many ways feel like my childhood was "taken" from me. I was an only child for nine years, with very little company from kids my own age, and then my parents divorced and I was forced to kind of parent my little sister, a lot of the time. I do think Disney means a lot to me because of that. Sometimes, for some of us, it takes being an adult to give us the perspective we need to let ourselves be a kid again, as paradoxical as that seems.

 

[DVCkidsMOM]

I've read that you have two chances at a child relationship: as the child then again as the parent. I'm very much enjoying my second chance...

Lesson I have learned is that when rebuilding your childhood, you need to sometimes care for that child (you) that wasn't properly cared for years ago. You may have to schedule "me time," but it is critical so schedule it.
I cry at Wishes too.
Hope you find the best "me time" for you, be it whatever mix of counseling, bubble baths, friend time, family time, hiking, silly time, etc. works for you.