A night of nightmares - psychological abuse as a child?

Have been feeling quite depressed the last couple of days, as usual not the slightest idea why. Now last night I had one of the worst nights of nightmares I've ever had.

I won't go into all of them, suffice to say they went all night, and would continue on after I woke up. The worst one however was about my family, or more particularly my mother and an older brother; not sure which one as I have two older brothers who both appear to be competing with each other over their respective asshole-ness. Kevin is 4 years older than me and was the one who visited at new years with his psycho son Phillip who bashed David in our own home (the hearing for that's in June). John is my oldest brother who terrified me as a child, one time chasing me with a fuckin tractor FFS. I've not seen him in 2 decades. My mother died when I was 13.

So anyway, from the dream I had just before that, in this dream I'd become so terrified from the previous dream I'd lost the plot and my head wasn't presently reachable to communicate with. In this second dream they'd put me in a small room with another on suite thing. I'd woken terrified (this is all in my dream) and went over to the door opening it and calling out to mum in this state to come and be with me. One of my older brothers came to the door and kicked me fair and square in the guts, shutting the door on me. I staggered back and lay on the bed, still in a state. I lay there with the blankets over me and then felt the blankets being pulled from the bottom, that was completely and utterly terrifying. Had my brother sneaked back into the room to fuck with my head? It was about then I woke up.

I dunno WTF is going on in my head to have a dream like this. I sat up in bed, David was asleep, both cats were asleep on their respective chairs they'd claimed for themselves, and all was well. Took me some minutes however to come back to the present reality. I also had a massive headache from the back of my neck and took two Panadol for that. 

I've only ever had a night terror once in my life (stay away from special k darlings) but this was almost as bad as that. I could hear in my own voice how scared I was when I called out to mum from the open door.

On reflection I'm guessing this may have something to do with Kevin and the horrible person he was to me growing up. I discussed this with my psychologist last time I saw him, how I couldn't remember one kind thing he'd ever done for me as a kid or even a teenager. In hindsight he must have hated me. He always made fun of me and constantly put me down as a person. Took me ages to get over what he alone had done to my head, let alone the rest of the family.

My psychologist said it must have been terrible for me, and it certainly was. Often psychological abuse gets less of a mention than physical abuse, but recent studies have shown abuse of your head can have just as much of an impact on a child as physical abuse.

Psychological abuse — including demeaning, bullying and humiliating — may be the most prevalent form of child maltreatment. Yet it's among the hardest to identify or to treat. 

It may be the most common kind of child abuse — and the most challenging to deal with. But psychological abuse, or emotional abuse, rarely gets the kind of attention that sexual or physical abuse receives. That’s the message of a trio of pediatricians, who write this week in the journal Pediatrics with a clarion call to other family doctors and child specialists: stay alert to the signs of psychological maltreatment. Its effects can be every bit as devastating as those of other abuse. 

Psychological maltreatment can include terrorizing, belittling or neglecting a child, the pediatrician authors say. more

One things for sure, I'm not going to let Kevin get away with anything like that this time. Or his psycho son. No fuckin wonder his son come out as a bloody psycho, with a fuckin asshole father like that.

That's if he comes over from New Zealand for the Hearing. One would think he would given he's Phillip's only witness.