Pictures speak a thousand words

Pictures speak a thousand words
E

EGL

Registrant
Last week, I took a family photograph of my family to my therapy session to show my therapist, who had requested to see it. It was made when I was about 5 years old. I'm sitting on my mother's lap, and my older brother is sitting on my father's lap, and my oldest brother is standing behind my parents' shoulders. My father was the physical abuser, middle brother was to become the sexual abuser when I was 12.

Observations from my therapist:

  • About me - "You look like a deer caught in the headlights, afraid." Indeed, I was. I've always thought of it as the "whupped pup" look, I can tell it's a look of fear.
  • About middle bother (later sexual abuser) - "You can tell he's got an attitude." Yep. Bad attitude, and full of himself as well.
  • About oldest brother (he was looking off to one side in the photo) - "Like he's already planning how to escape this family." Bingo. I haven't seen him in several years, although he lives 1 mile from me now.
  • About my father - "He doesn't look like he has any emotion in him, like he's empty." Yes, again. He's unable to relate to his own children, unable to understand anything other than beating the crap out of us all.
  • About my mother (emotional and physical neglect) - "She's the only one smiling." Hmmm....wonder why?

Pictures speak volumes.
 
That is interesting EGL.

I have no pictures, 'family' pictures, that include my father. I have no pictures of him at all. The pictures of me with my mother, it seems in the younger ones I am trying to get away from her, or out of the picture, and then am closer to her in the older ones. Similar to part of our relationship I think.

I have only one picture of my younger brother, and we were not even aware that one existed until my Uncle found it last year.

Leosha
 
Hi EGL,

Pictures do indeed speak a thousand words...

The most valuable gift I have ever recieved was from my Grandparents 3 christmas's ago - it was a photo album containing every photo of me she had ever taken while I was growing up (and believe me - she was quite a shutter bug) - in some of those pictures you can plain and clearly see the pain in my eyes (yes - it is that deer in the headlights - scared shitless look)- you can see the rags they used to dress me in - you can see me looking down instead of at the camera - some of the pictures I seem to be in almost a sort of military stance - smiles? - the only ones to be seen are clearly fake ones - there is even a picture of me and my brother sitting on my Uncles (S/A perp) lap - I am leaning out away from him, looking away, with a look of surely not wanting to be there (and he has his hand right in my crotch!)

Those pictures clearly validate my past - I also have some pictures that I snuck out of mom's collection that validate the past even more...

But - those are not the pictures that are of the most value to me in that album...

There are a very few pictures of me with my grandparents - taken durring times when my folks were away - pictures where you can see the true happiness radiating from the body of that little child - a happiness that was so rarely seen - those are the most valuable of all pictures to me... - to know that that child did indeed find a few brief moments of happiness...

I always found it strange that my T did not seem to care about the pictures - never understood why???
 
Last year I found a picture of myself from when I was around 5 years old. I scanned it and use it as one of the wallpapers on my laptop. I don't know exactly why, though. I only know that it's me from the background, context, etc.

This year when we were packing up before remodeling the basement I found a picture that must be me as an infant. (My wife thinks she can see features in the baby from this picture that our kids have.) I showed it to my T once. I don't know much about it except that it's probably me.

Besides those, there are few pictures of anything in our family from my youth. My parents and my mother in law collaborated on a photo project as a wedding gift for us. It has several pictures of my wife as she was growing up, but only the baby picture of me, then pictures of the young adult. And I argued with my family that it's not me in some of those pictures, too.

Now I have thousands of pictures of my kids. Our digital camera paid for itself in saved photo processing costs within the first year. I have scanned dozens, if not hundreds, of the older photos. This summer I even copied them to DVDs. Maybe I don't have that kind of "history" but my kids will, if I have anything to say about it.

Thanks,

Joe
 
This thread has been a good primer for me.

Next time I'm at my Mom's I'm going to look for as many family pictures as I can find. It will be interesting to look at myself, as I was, through the eyes that I have now.

Being labeled the family 'clown' was both something I sought and something which didn't make sense to me then.

Kenn
 
I remember the pictures of me, before and after, I remember the shy and the good pictures of me before, but the one's after, yes, I could never look into a camera and smile, the smiles where gone.

Most of them are of me looking downward, or away from the camera, probably because I really didn't want to know what I looked like, or even others for that matter.

I did not want the camera to capture, what was really going on inside, as I could not really smile, and I did not want to see a picture of what I had become, can you relate to that, but it is so.

Suppose, you are really supposed to be happy, when someone takes your picture, but I avoided it at all costs, so many pictures where never taken, so not so many memories...

ste
 
Hummmm........

The only pictures I have of my childhood are a
few taken my my Grandmother and Aunts.

I do have a few "school" photos that show me in 4th grade, then 7th and of course high school.

Therapist said it was typical as it was beyond a dysfunctional family.

Sad one is me in 4th garde, a small very "pretty" boy, next to girls that appear to be Amazons.

Hey, my eyes are teared up and I am happy for my GrandMa! and Aunts the only family other than a sister that was psychologically abused.


Thinking if Joni Mitchels sad, haunting song "Tin Angel", Tom Rush had best revsion about 1972.

"and try to put another heart in him"


My wife has in a hall way a hundred photos of her childhood and family; just say two of me.........


Joe

PS

this bit goes way overboard: but I did major in English (actually Psychology undergrad but scholarship was English Honors) whatever:

Movie: Blade Runner

The humanoid genetic people all carried photos a
mythical family and they looked at them for comfort. How about that!

With the internet I could create a family album?

PS2

Being a "pretty boy", My therapist said I was "doomed" as I had no father.
 
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