Abuse survivor reveals why the ‘dread’, ‘atmosphere’ of childhood home was ‘worse’ than violence

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A woman who suffered horrific abuse from her parents throughout her childhood says she remembers the atmosphere at home more than any single incident that left her beaten and injured.

Lee Bird grew up with a “very destructive” father and an alcoholic mother with borderline personality disorder, and he would defend his marriage before her.

“He was letting me wear a belt, which I didn’t realize until about six months ago that the unpredictability at home causes complete disorientation in a child,” he said.

“But the nervous system is one of the most remarkable protection systems we have; it’s a built-in alarm.”

Mrs. Bird thought the atmosphere in her home was like the weather, protecting her from “the many lightning strikes that come my way.”

“I used to call my father thunder,” he said.

“My mother was like the person who accepted this, so I jumped in like a child to save, then I couldn’t understand why I jumped to help, as a child there is no language for this.

“(He) wasn’t jumping up to look at me, and that’s where the disorientation comes from.”

Ms Bird said the whole house felt like a theatre, where she learned how to behave, when to breathe, when to look away and when to hide.

He was watching, listening, scanning and measuring what was going on inside his house because he didn’t have the language to express it.

“Silence then turned into a silent adult who maintained options and the possibility of abuse,” he said.

“The rising voice, the slamming doors, the noise of silence, the knot in the stomach and the terror.

“This can make you really sick, tired, and hypervigilant.”

The abuse physically damaged Ms Bird and left her so weakened that it derailed her education.

He lost the ability to trust people, but found that therapy helped stop the physical reactions he continued to experience into adulthood.

Ms Bird aims to give hope to other surviving victims by recounting her harrowing experience in her book, Girl One-Five-Eight.

“If we want safer futures and healthier relationships, we need to pay more attention to the atmospheres we create everywhere because every child is at this stage of development and feels everything,” he said.

Domestic and family violence affects a significant number of Australian children, according to the Australian Institute of Family Studies.

Data from Our Watch shows that approximately 20 children are killed by their parents each year, and half of them are two years old or younger.

The Australian Child Maltreatment Survey found that three in ten children have experienced emotional abuse by a parent or carer, three in ten have experienced sexual abuse and two in five have experienced domestic violence.

Research from the Australian Institute of Family Studies has found that exposure to domestic and family violence can have far-reaching consequences for children, affecting their physical and mental health, development and education, and is a leading driver of childhood homelessness.

Researchers also found that child abuse and child sexual abuse often occur alongside domestic and family violence.

In the Perspectives on Domestic Violence in Children report, child victims explained that they live in constant fear and anxiety, and feel powerless and angry.

They experienced physical symptoms such as insomnia, headaches, and nausea, and tried to stop the violence by retreating into their imagination, hiding, leaving the house, immersing themselves in television or gaming, turning to trusted friends or relatives, or trying to deescalate the situation themselves.

But Kelly Gough, President of the Australian Psychological Society, said one of the most important things children who experience domestic violence and family violence endure in any incident that occurs is a sense of fear.

Mr Gough said the brain works like a prediction machine trying to figure out what will happen next, which leads people with traumatic childhoods to always be on guard because they never know when the next bad thing will happen.

People living in traumatic homes or war zones have higher anxiety levels because bad things happen frequently, he said.

“As you get older, you become much more likely to expect bad things, to react unconsciously, and to always be in the same state of preparedness or fear,” he said.

“This often happens when you’re a young child, especially before you can even verbalize what’s going on, so it can be something very experienced, a felt feeling rather than any actual narrative or memory; it happens later when you get the words and start thinking and learning the words.”

Mr Gough said the more traumatic experiences a person had in childhood increased their risk of physical and mental health illnesses in the future.

“We can generally say that trauma in children is bad, it leads to really measurable changes in brain structures,” he said.