Scattered pieces

Monkeytraps is one of my favourite mental health professional blogs.  It’s about control, relationships, and monkeys… well less about monkeys, and more about control.  Steve Hauptman (the author) writes some really interesting posts; so when I saw the latest one titled Just the world, I was curious as to what it was about.  This was my sister’s birthday after all, the perfect day to be challenged slightly…  However, there was no way I could have anticipated what actually happened…

Steve wrote about how each of us form this concept of what is a “just world”… one where good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people.  I admit, that I fall into this thinking, regarding myself and my past… I was abused because I was bad, evil, asked for it, provocative, a slut, a whore… the list goes on. I don’t judge others in this way; but for myself, I lay it on thick!

After describing this “just world” scenario, Steve gave the punch line… we buy into this concept of a “just world” because it gives the illusion of control.  Talk about a kick in the gut…

All of my life I have strived to be perfect.  I got as many A’s as I could, while panicking over every B and C; I played sport above my age grade; I was silent; I didn’t cry; I did everything within my power to be perfect… Because if they saw how perfect I really was, they would stop…  They would leave me alone.

But I knew that they saw the evil in me.  They saw how dirty and disgusting I was; so my focus of control changed.  I no longer wanted them to stop, as I was beyond redemption.  Instead, my only purpose, was to stop others from being hurt.  As I grew up, I thought I had succeeded with this aim… I wasn’t aware of any whispers about other girls being taken to “those” places. My sister seemed troubled, but “fine”.

It wasn’t until I finally admitted to my mother what had happened about five years ago, that she said “was one of the boys J. Doe?  Because I was talking to his mother the other week, and she was telling me about the historical sexual abuse charges he is facing”.  At that point, my idea of a “just world” collapsed.  I had failed.  I hadn’t been enough for them to not hurt others; and I hadn’t spoken up so that others would have been spared.  My illusion of control crumbled…

I was unable to see beyond this being my fault… my control… my fault…

I still can’t.  I can’t accept, as Steve suggests, that there is no “just world”; but instead, the  world is a place where justice is possible, and that shit happens.  It can happen to good people, or bad.  It doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t discriminate, it just happens.

But if that’s true; then maybe one day, a long, long time ago, I was maybe a good person?  Maybe?

But bad things happen to bad people, so maybe I was bad all along.  I came into this world screaming, and didn’t stop for six months.  I was difficult and evil, even then.

Please let me have saved at least one person.  Please.  Please don’t let what they did to me, be for nothing.  There had to be some purpose beyond their needs and wants?  There does, doesn’t there?  There must.  That is why it’s easier for me to believe it was my fault, my evil, my badness attracting the inevitable karma of equal badness to balance out the universe.

Funny thing is… we used to say “shit happens” all the time growing up… “Shit happens, and then you get over it”.

As a note: I never think anyone else deserves bad things to happen to them.  Please know that.  I always turn it in on myself, but never hold that thinking for others.  I’m always devastated to know of any pain to any other living thing.

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Now playing: The Verve Pipe – The Freshman
via FoxyTunes

Of all the relationships in my life, my one with food is probably one of the most dysfunctional.  It started from when I was a baby, when I was defined as a “fussy eater”.  This warped over time into odd eating behaviours… when my mother used to get us ready for school, I remember we would have breakfast and a prepared lunch; but that only happened for the first couple of years of my schooling, and I was soon going to school without breakfast or lunch.  I don’t remember ever feeling hungry during these times, but I do remember the embarrassment when it was raining and we had to eat our lunch in the classroom… I always pretended that I’d forgotten my lunch.  It wasn’t that we were poor, and couldn’t afford food; I just didn’t know how to make lunch, and I wasn’t really interested.  The couple of times that I did make my lunch, I recall looking at it as an oddity, and as if it was some sort of foreign thing that had arrived out of the blue.  I never felt jealous of my friends who had lunches, only boredom as I waited for them to finish eating.

During my childhood, there were a couple of significant events involving food and my weight that strongly effected me:

1. My father commented that “at least she’s not fat like her mother and sister”.
2. My mother would compare myself and her friends daughters regarding our weight.  One time she pushed in my loose t-shirt, to show that I didn’t have a “fat stomach”.

These events dehumanised me, and made me think that if I was overweight, then no one would want to touch me.  That weight would act like a protective barrier against the world.  This thinking became strong during my teens, and I gained weight…  I no longer wanted people to touch me.  But what I didn’t expect, was the teasing and self-hatred that my weight caused.  This is what started the roller-coaster that my weight became – I would lose weight, and feel vulnerable to abuse; so gain weight, and feel disgusting and gross.

When I attended university, my weight issues came to a head.  I couldn’t afford food, and there were stressors which meant that some of my other self-injurious behaviours became out of control.  My weight dropped drastically.  It was the first time that the doctors started weighing me as a way of monitoring what was going on.  As I’d never owned any scales, this was the first time I’d been weighed since I was in school.  I remember being horrified at my weight… it was much too high.  I’ve never had an ideal weight in my mind, but what was being shown on the scale was way above what I thought it should be.  I remember the doctor talking about nutrition, and how I was showing signs of deficiencies.  I remember him talking about having to monitor my weight unless I got it back up to a healthy level.  All I wanted, was to run and hide.

When I finished university, by weight went back to the roller-coaster, mainly dipping when I was going out with someone.  In many ways, I considered eating to be an inconvenience.  People seemed obsessed with it, and I couldn’t understand the obsession.  At other times, I would be eating, and part way through a mouthful of food, become so disgusted with what was in my mouth that I didn’t know what to do with it.  Sometimes I would have to go and get rid of it, sometimes I was frozen in disgust.

During my marriage, food was a control issue… everything else in my life was so out of control, that I had to have some control somewhere.  The ex-husband was a big man, and a big eater.  He liked to think that he was a chef, but in reality, he was a glorified kitchen hand.  He preferred fatty, unhealthy foods.  That, in combination with the memories surrounding the times when my father was a butcher, were the final straw for my brain, and I could no long touch uncooked food.  It became difficult to touch any food, but uncooked meat, was especially difficult.  The feel of it on my skin was stomach churning.  This, combined with feeling that I didn’t deserve good nutrition, again led to more signs of malnutrition… oddly enough I was overweight at this time, but not eating food that had any nutritional value.

During the process of my divorce, the food issues ramped up again.  I soon couldn’t eat at all.  I was surviving on nutritional drinks, and trying to show a smiling face to the world.

Other forms of self-injury have co-existed with my food issues, and often if one of the other forms increases, then the food issues ease off.  It’s seemed like some sort of warped trade-off.  But now, it’s revolving solely around food.

Over the last few months, I’ve lost a fairly significant amount of weight.  But oddly enough, even though I weigh myself every day, with the hope of losing weight, a part of me doesn’t connect the dots between losing weight, and losing dress sizes.  So when I had to go and buy new clothing, there was a panic about going down in size… fears of the abuse starting again resurfaced, and ironically, drove a need for more food control.

I’ve never been diagnosed as having an eating disorder, so I feel a bit of a fake talking about this… but as someone recently told me, you don’t have to be diagnosed with something, in order to have a problem with it.  I have a problem, I’m just not sure how bad it is.

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Now playing: Fauré: Cantique De Jean Racine, Op. 11
via FoxyTunes

Please note that this entry might trigger due to the issues of child abuse and religion being discussed.

Over two years ago, I wrote the post Religion and Karma.  In it, I shared some of my confusion around religious concepts.  Since I wrote that piece, my confusion has, if anything, deepened.  Conflicted and distorted messages about religion, and my self worth, have driven much of my dysfunction over the last two months.  I have been bombarded with messages about being evil and not worthy of being here, or of this healing journey.

To give a bit of background as to where much of the distortions come from, my father is Roman Catholic and attended a Catholic school.  It was a strict (or traditional) school, with his left handedness being beaten out of him, and intimacy a taboo subject.  In contrast, my mother based her religious affiliations on which church had the best outdoor basketball (netball) team – Baptist won.  When they married, my mother converted to Catholicism and regularly attended church.  My siblings, and myself, were all christened, and my brothers confirmed.  The families pathway through Catholicism ended after my mother had me.  She was advised that if she had any more children, she would probably die in childbirth.  When the church heard of my mothers decision to use birth control, she was asked not to return.  As she was the driving force behind our going to church, this meant that none of the family returned.

This is what I now know of the families leaving the fold.  But, as I was growing up, my brothers told me that we were asked not to return to church because I screamed too much during the service.  Being a sensitive and trusting child, I took those stories, and internalised them.  I became convinced that I was the reason that the whole family was going to go to Hell for eternal damnation.

Later, I had several encounters with religion…  My sister attended an extremely devout and divisive youth group… I attended religious camps during the school holidays; where, along with John 3:16, we were taught Matthew 25:46 – my sensitivity meant that I took both as signs that I was a sinner…  I later joined Rally (similar to Girl Guides), which had a strong religious basis.  It was here that things became very confused, as I was old enough to be aware of the messages and expectations, but failed to live up to them.  I was told that I needed to pray for God to come into my heart, and I would know that this had occurred when I felt a warmth and peace.  Well, I was so disconnected by this stage, that there was no way I was going to feel any warmth in my heart, or anywhere else.  This was the final blow, and I turned my back on any further attempts to connect to a higher power.

Throughout all of this, I was being abused.  Some of the abusers used phrasing with religious connotations as part of the abuse.  I now realise that this had nothing to do with me, but I still internalised it at the time, and took it as further proof as to why God had turned his back on me.  I was evil and a sinner.  I was beyond salvation.

One of the system, W, has great problems with anything religious.  I had never really understood why this trigger was so big, when I had never been abused by a religious figure.  Then, last Thursday, Allison asked W what her role was within the system… her answer “to pray”.  To pray for forgiveness.  To pray for help.

When I was eight, I was abused by some teenagers in the school grounds.  The location of the event is significant, because on the rise, about 50 metres away, was a church.  About 3 metres away from the structure I was being abused in, there was a thoroughfare for pedestrians and cyclists.  It wasn’t busy, but there were usually some people walking by.  As I was being abused, W was created within my mind to pray to the church on the hill… to the God she had heard about… she prayed for help from the people walking by… she prayed for salvation from what was happening.  When no one answered those prayers, she saw it as proof that we were evil, and therefore not worthy of God’s help.

I was never really exposed to the positive side of any religion.  It was all doom and gloom… damnation… selfishness, and selfish acts.  My God was a very fearful, vengeful one, and he wasn’t pleased with me.

As I learned about God, I was getting hurt, as were millions of others in the world.  That didn’t seem fair, or just.  I never liked the overly simple explanation of free will.  I still don’t understand how such evil can be in this world.  Then, if you have evil, then surely there must be a counter balance to that; and what is that counter, if not a God?

As you can see, I’m still very confused.  I initially made this private because I don’t know if I can handle comments on this issue.  But, after a couple of people read what I wrote, I realised that maybe I need others reading this in order to challenge my thinking around all of this.  I still don’t know what I need to help me understand all of the distorted and confused messages in my head, but this post was one step in trying to sort it through.  I don’t know how much help Allison is going to be on this, as when she was questioned last week, there was a sense that she wasn’t firm in her beliefs, so therefore can’t be believed.

I do know that they seriously effect my self worth.  The messages about not being worthy of being here, are tied to the messages about religion.

I finish this post, not knowing why I wrote it, let alone published it on the blog.  Maybe to show you how bad I really am.

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Now playing: Sarah McLachlan – Angel
via FoxyTunes

As a child, it was often up to me to take on the responsibility of the destructive play of my siblings… if something got damaged while the four of us were playing, the others decided that, because I was the favourite, the father would be less angry if I took the blame.  This sort of blame game became so advanced, that I would often come home from school to find myself responsible for another broken vase, letting the chooks out, etc.  Because I was so much younger than the others, I took on the responsibility that the others gave me without question – I had little choice.

This scenario set me up for taking punishments which weren’t mine to take.  It also meant that when I really did something wrong, I thought the world was going to end, because I’d been punished for things I didn’t do, so how bad was the punishment going to be for the things that I did do?  I tried in very childish ways to cover up for any of my mistakes, and tried so very hard not to make any to begin with.  But, mistakes were inevitable.  My father is narcissistic, so often the mistakes were beyond my comprehension… spending too long with a friends family (“Do you like them more than your own family?”), reading too many books (“So you think you’re better than the rest of us, do you?”), and so on.

It seemed as if the goal posts which determined my mistakes, and what I was responsible for, kept changing.

This has lead to what has been described as one of my more annoying traits… the tendency to apologise for everything and anything.  I apologise like it’s my responsibility that someone else is having a bad day, and taking it out on you; when someone else makes a bad decision; that you got an B instead of an A for that assignment… you get the idea.  I realise that this is my co-dependency issues coming to the surface again… I’ll do anything to placate someone and ease a tense situation.  I don’t intellectually believe that I am responsible for these problems; but I believe emotionally that if I don’t apologise, something bad will happen.  The more I care about you, or the more I’m scared of you, the more I will apologise.

I’m not sure if it is associated with this trait, but I often don’t remember apologies from others.  I can be sure that someone else hasn’t apologised, to then find an email where they clearly state they’re sorry for a misunderstanding.  As I write this, I wonder if I don’t remember others apologies, because I don’t want to be in the role of a person doling out the punishment for the wrongs others have done.  I vividly remember my father saying that he didn’t want to punish me, but he had to because it was the only way that I’d learn.  I could be saying sorry, but it didn’t matter, the punishment had to be done.  So now, it’s almost as if I’m scared that by accepting an apology, I’ll be responsible for that person being hurt in some way, just as my father was “forced” to punish when he didn’t want to… so I block out the apology to avoid the consequences.

I often block out the misunderstanding as well, but not always.  This can create a situation where parts of me are feeling (rightly) agrieved about a situation; and while an apology has been forthcoming from the other person involved, other parts of the system have blocked the apology as an old self protection coping mechanism.  The knowledge that I can block out an apology leads to a situation where I doubt my own experiences and feelings.  I’m never sure whether I have a right to be upset about something, or whether it was sorted through at the time of the incident.  As a result, I tend to stamp down my feelings and keep on going.

As I heal, I’m finding that the stamping down isn’t as effective.  There is more tension around the issue of being hurt by others and apologies in general.  I get confused about when I should be offended, and when I deserve an apology.  It’s a whole other kettle of fish actually acting on any of those feelings…  I often miss the mark, and ask about a situation which I don’t fully remember, and has been worked through.  I’d like to think that it’s progress that I took the risk of asking… but in reality it makes me feel like a failure for not having the full picture.  I’ve learned to only do this with people that I trust, and are the least likely to be offended if I don’t remember the whole incident… like learning all things new, I’ve still got my training wheels on, and one of them is a bit loose.  Until I can fix the training wheel and get more confidence about what apologies mean to me, I’ll keep on apologising at the drop of a hat, and question those that let me land on a soft cushion when I get it wrong.

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Now playing: The Fray – How To Save A Life
via FoxyTunes

Note: The images in this entry could be triggering.

The activity for this months Expressive Arts Carnival was:

Through drawing, painting or any other visual means, create a self portrait. Please also include a couple of sentences saying what the process was like for you.

Over the years I have done a few self portraits – many of my Polyvore sets are forms of self portraits, although I’m rarely aware of it at the time.  So to approach an activity with the intent of creating a self portrait, was oddly intimidating.  It’s difficult to portray to the world how you see yourself, when you know that your self image is so twisted.  I can see myself as innocent, guilty, fat, thin, ugly, dirty, disgusting, etc all at once.

There is an added layer of confusion, when you see yourself as a reflection of those around you.  The most obvious example of this is when I was growing up, I was constantly comparing myself to the sister.  She always seemed to be able to garner the attention of the parents that I so desperately wanted.  I never seemed to be able to get it though, no matter how much I tried.

So, I entered into this exercise with a great deal of trepidation.  I had no idea what I was going to do, until I read back over a couple of blog entries, and spotted my comment about the sister and I both receiving identical dolls with different coloured outfits for Christmas.  Then it became fairly easy.  Purchasing identical dolls was as simple as going to The Warehouse (Target or Walmart equivalent).  But then came the task of creating the difference between the two dolls.  In many ways, what I ended up creating was the exact opposite of how we appeared to the outside world… the sister was “the bad one”, who always got into trouble; while I was “the good one”, who always appeared perfect.  But with the dolls, I created how we appeared in my mind…

Self Portrait

The front doll is the sister, and I’m in the background.  She’s looking straight at the camera, getting the attention she deserves; meanwhile, I’m  obscured, blurry, looking down, trying to be invisible.

You might be able to tell that I “altered” the doll representing myself.  This alteration, is a reflection of how I see myself – as damaged goods.

Eye

I was amazed that I was able to damage the doll, and fairly easily.  All of the toys I purchase, are left in their packaging, usually with the price still on.  I’m not allowed to open or touch them due to how I might contaminate them with my filth.  Yet, with these dolls, they were opened and one of them basically destroyed within a very short time.  It was cathartic, and slightly disturbing.  I now have a damaged doll… I’ve no idea what I’m going to do with it.

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Now playing: P!nk – Family Portrait
via FoxyTunes

Two weeks ago, I was convinced that I had this Christmas thing sorted. I was feeling excited.  I was thinking of putting up a Christmas tree and decorations, there was even talk of presents!  When I consider the place I was in, at this time last year, that felt like a huge improvement.  But then, the stirrings of Christmas past started to come back to haunt me.  I have few memories of Christmas as I was growing up; but what I do remember, is full of pain, contradictions, unmet expectations and false hope.

What do you see when you look at the typical Christmas imagery?  Happy families, snow, Christmas trees, presents, togetherness, joy, peace, and so on.  These all help to build up expectations of what Christmas should be.  There is a huge pressure from society to meet these expectations; and it’s almost impossible for a regular family to meet them, let alone a dysfunctional family like the one I grew up a part of.

I remember Christmas as being a burden for the family… there was so much money needed for presents, food and alcohol.  The mother would save throughout the year in order to be able to fulfil the work and family commitments that were expected of us… we must keep up the illusion of the perfect family after all, mustn’t we!  Those commitments involved hosting parties where the Summer heat, alcohol and music lead to a lowering of inhibitions and an increasing level of raucousness.  I still have nightmares about the laughter from the parties.

Thinking about the presents we received, it was odd.  As there were two boys and two girls in the family, we often got the same presents, but different colours – my brothers would both get the same plane, but from different countries; the sister and I would get the same doll, but hers would be brunette and mine would be blonde.  I find that a little odd, especially as the sister is five years older than me.  Did she get inappropriately younger gifts, or did I get inappropriately older gifts?  I’m not sure why, but I get a sense that the gifts were another way different ones in the system felt that they “owed” the parents, and that we were disposable, or easily exchanged with the sister.  It seems like we weren’t encouraged to feel a sense of individuality or separateness from each other.

Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful to have received gifts, especially when I know that so many go without. I’m only trying to show how easily children can pick-up on undercurrents and implied messages.  I doubt that the mother was purposefully trying to invalidate any of us with the gifts, but that is what happened.  I have a feeling she did it in the interests of treating us equally, and it’s only with my now distorted hindsight, that I see it in this way.

Presents have always been a triggering and negative thing for me.  The act of someone giving me a gift immediately raises questions about the persons motivations… What do they expect in return?  What have I done that is worthy of receiving a gift?  What do I get the person in return?  What is appropriate to give?  What do I have to do to keep their respect, or is it all a game and they’re teasing me?

I’m getting better at accepting gifts as they were intended, but it’s still a struggle.  Part of me continues to go back to the old days where getting a present was a reward for being a “good girl”.  This is possibly why Christmas was always so difficult… different people would give me presents, and I couldn’t figure out what was needed to pay them back.  It’s for this reason that I like the change in focus away from gifts… which reminds me of an argument that I continually had with Matthew.  He was always worried about not being able to compete with his now ex-wife because she could afford to give the boys gifts.  I would always argue that his place within his boys life was secure as long as he provided them with love and safety.  But I don’t know if that’s true, I’d like to think it is, but peer pressure and societal expectations can be a great influence.

Sometimes I hate society.  Then, I’m reminded of the good it can do as well – Geek girls ACTIVATE! I know the first action was one of bullying, but the response was what mattered.  It reminds me that there is good out there too.

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Now playing: Falling Slowly – Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová
via FoxyTunes

My head is a swirling mass of thoughts and memories…

I should clarify, that the word cancer is there because our old neighbour is dying of cancer and doesn’t have much longer to live.

Note: Yes, there was an major Earthquake in New Zealand, but we’re well away from it.  My heart goes out to all of those affected…

I learned from an early age that my family needed to be protected.  In my childlike way, I saw them as being unable to handle the secrets I held, or even to be able to deal with daily problems.  I saw the family around me, as being a swirling mass of chaos, and the only way to bring some control and calm to the situation, was for me to be a silent rock.

While this sounds very egocentric, it meshes with some of the basic principles of childhood development.  Dunn (1991, as cited in Claiborne & Drewery, 2010, p. 157), discuss how children as young as two attempt to comfort their mother when they see her distressed.  While Lewis (2002, as cited in Santrock, 2007, p. 340), talk about the development of shame and guilt for not meeting societal expectations in children as young as two and a half.  So it makes developmental sense, that by the time I was first abused at the age of three (nearly four), I could understand (in a childlike way) the implications of telling.  I could grasp the idea that it might either hurt someone else, or bring shame on myself for not meeting my mothers expectations – after all I was told at the event that it was “bad”, “dirty”, “wrong” and “naughty”… all very emotive words to a sensitive child.

Reading the literature on dysfunctional families, it also becomes clear that the need to protect my family meant that I lost sense of appropriate boundaries (Kerig, 2005).  It meant that I became enmeshed in the problems of some of my family (father, sister and one of my brothers) and held other members of my family quite distant from myself (mother and other brother).  Throughout the family, there was almost no boundaries where I was concerned.  My other siblings were able to create some sense of boundaries, but I seemed unable to do so.  This is possibly because of the age gap between us  – there is a five year age gap between myself and the next oldest child, but only four years difference between my other siblings combined.  It could also be because I was a difficult baby/child and I didn’t emotionally attach securely to anyone, with the associated developmental impact (Claiborne & Drewery, 2010, p. 49-51).

At this point, the intellectual part of me is happy with the theory as it helps to explain why we got where we did… the cynical part of me notes that we never had a chance… while the emotional part is screaming in pain…

So what does all this theory mean?  On one level, it helps to explain why we ended up in a dysfunctional family and were an easy target for abuse… we had no concept of what an appropriate boundary was; we were used to protecting others; and we didn’t really understand that it was wrong, because we didn’t understand where we ended and the rest of the world began.  On another level, there’s pain… total and utter pain… it doesn’t matter why it happened, it happened and it hurt.

In the midst of writing this post, I’ve seen the work place therapist.  In that one hour “talk” we did a sociogram of three people – my neighbour, the mother and sister.  It was incredible and awful…  On the floor we placed whiteboard magnets for each person in relation to myself…

First, was my neighbour, who was placed about 5cm from my marker… she was safety, freedom and acceptance.  But she was also shame and pain… I once overheard my neighbour, the mother, the sister and my neighbours daughter discussing how good it was that I wasn’t around because I was so annoying.  She was the safest thing I had outside of the teachers at school.

Second to be placed, was a marker for the mother, who was about 15cm away from my marker… she was not to be trusted, to be protected, consumed with the problems of my sister and joked about me being the mistake at the end.

Third to be placed, was my sister’s marker… this is where the lack of boundaries really showed… I told the work place therapist that she should be placed on the other side of the room, and on top of my marker.  There was nothing in-between, she was either invading my space or ignoring me.  She controlled many aspects of my life.  We shared a room for many years and she invaded my space so often, in so many ways.

This seemingly simple task brought up so much… W filled in the rest of the memory surrounding what happened after we overheard the discussion about us being so annoying – we got down off the fence and went inside the house to be hurt… We realised how young we dissociated, as we remembered getting a hug from a teacher for correcting a story; but we were depersonalised at the time, as we were so terrified that we hadn’t corrected the story “properly”.

Sophie cried… W was tough… Little Michelle stuttered…

Our work place therapist kept bringing us back to the emotions…

It was difficult, but not overwhelming.

What does all of this mean?  Well, for once I can understand the theory and associate some of the emotions with it.  Yes, I parented/protected those around me… I looked after my family’s needs before my own, I kept the secrets, all the while learning to cope and adapt through the gift/curse of dissociation.  I failed to learn and understand what appropriate boundaries were – physically, sexually, psychologically and emotionally.  I learned to lock away my emotions, and although these emotions hurt to look at and experience, they won’t destroy me – unless I let them (thank you to Meredith for today’s reminder regarding the truth of this statement).

My work place therapist said today that I was a strong child… Right now, that statement is enough for me to believe that I can heal and grow beyond the confined world I find myself in.

References

Claiborne, L., & Drewery, W. (2010). Human development: Family, place, culture. North Ryde, New South Wales, Australia: McGraw-Hill Australia.

Kerig, P. (2005). Revisiting the construct of boundary dissolution: A multidimensional perspective. Journal of Emotional Abuse 5(2/3), 5-42. doi: 10.1300/J135v05n02•02

Santrock, J. (2007). Child development (11th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill.