Spoiled Children of Divorce

Someday Children of Divorce will be able to be treated for mental health conditions related to their childhood experiences. A wrong diagnosis which fits a psychologist’s personal needs just adds insult to injury and makes the C-PTSD much worse. It’s almost like being a silent victim of some sort of gang mentality. Omertà. Don’t talk about the crime.

I have seen three examples of grown men from divorced families who I assume have Intermittent explosive disorder as adults. The first one I met had just been released from jail for going to a business and ripping the place apart. He even broke some windows. He said he had blacked out. Maybe he was drunk or high and just didn’t admit that part. He said that this was something that had happened before. It was bewildering because he was such a nice guy, otherwise. And another guy I knew did the same thing at his job. The same MO, bashing glass. Both were from divorced families.

Girls may be diagnosed as Borderline Personality Disorder because of the lack of trust and fear of abandonment. I’d say it’s internalization from watching your mother go on date after date after date and then trying to grow up in the meantime. Trying to defend one’s self from what will probably go wrong. I knew a girl in high school who probably had Borderline Personality Disorder. Her whole family was trying to help her, she had therapists and psychiatrists and it seemed as if there was no real stress in her life. Have never actually met a grown woman from divorce who was diagnosed as Borderline but did a project on this website of looking at the childhoods of actresses who were diagnosed and found that a lot of them came from divorce. Probably cutting is a big expression. When I was in high school I used to scratch my legs until they bled just so that I could feel the pain somewhere.

Girls also fly off into rages so are also probably vulnerable to developing Intermittent Explosive Disorder later on in their 20’s, etc. My step-sister and I didn’t talk for ten years. Then, probably when we were about 27 years old, I came home one day and she and her husband were standing in front of my house. (She always had a weird stalking thing going I think). Anyway, we went off and had a chat. Our big revelation was that, although as kids we were both very quiet and gentle, we had both developed this ability to fly off into rages that seemed to come from out of the blue. We both knew that it was the stress that we had gone through. I was in therapy and she refused. She was right. All those years of powerlessness and chaos and having to remain silent.

Many divorces probably happen as a result of one parent having a serious mental illness. I did once meet a Father who was being denied visitation because of his Bipolar diagnosis. He was totally desperate to see his children. And did know a woman with Bipolar who was denied visitation. And, after getting to know her, I can say that that was a good thing. The word “narcissism” probably gets thrown around a lot now in divorces as well.

Since Children of Divorce can’t be treated for trauma later on in life maybe the Courts’ ideas to deny children access to a parent is the correct remedy. But, there is a grief there that probably also won’t ever be addressed because of the magic rule not to mention the Big “D.” And that probably can’t be talked about either.