What say you ???

I was listening to the radio this morning as my favourite guest clinical psychologist is always schedule on a Wednesday morning – however not today – but somehow gave his advice via tele-conferencing to the DJ’s on duty . The topic discussed ? – “ Do you think emotional or physical scar haunts you a lifetime ? “ . Pretty interesting topic I must say . Many callers called in and shared their experience about the many abuse that they endured not only during childhood but as adults too . Some unusual ones , many sad ones , not many happy ones , some even learnt their life lesson from those abuses and so on .

As for my experience , well , it’s mostly based from childhood and maybe not too many in my adulthood . One outstanding incident in particular , well this happened when I was in primary school , I came back home one afternoon after school , dump my school bag on the sofa and ran out just to play with a group of friends at a nearby street only to have my father come looking for me and giving me a real hard tight slap on my face in front of my friends ! Naturally , I started crying all the way back home and just slept off the whole afternoon not wanting to remember what happened earlier on . Then , there’s this other incident whereby , I was falsely accused of pulling the hair of another student when in actual it was not me but the friend who was with me at the time of that incident . I was not even given a chance to explain but was instead sent to the principal ‘s office and again was not given a chance to speak up ! - Yup and indeed those were my most traumatic times growing up . I was not a brave student as my schoolmate who often got into trouble when she spoke against the teacher and often got into arguments with the seniors and other teachers .

On another note , I was neither spared from being spanked by my parents and even older siblings ! But back then , this was called to discipline a child , now this is what the new generation calls as ‘ child abuse ‘ . Disciplining a child back then is based on how the parents of the older generation thinks . But now , it’s another story .

I don't hold anything against my parents or siblings for all that spanking , slaps and pinching for I know that happened for a reason - to make me a better person through the hard way . Life was never easy on us when we were growing up . Hence the only way we learn to be independent and work hard is through discipline and constant scolding and nagging from both the parents . Well , the scar of the past is transparent and long forgotten . Unfortunately , as I grow older , it's a different music that I have to face .

Just to end this post on what the clinical psychologist said , abuse is like hitting a nail on to the wood and later removing the nail but the mark of the nail is still on the wood . It's the same with abuse . It's only through faith and moving on with life one day at a time , which helps to heal those scars of abuse .