side blog of me getting better

[oftoxicparents]

Still grappling with the fact that I wasn't allowed to express negative emotions as a kid.

Not in a "smile more! Cheer up!" sense, but in the sense that I was constantly walking on eggshells around my parents emotion, and any perceived negativity, even/especially in response to their own negative emotions and volatile behavior, only made things worse and increased the length and hostility of their outbursts and abuse episodes.

So I simply learned never to express negative emotions, especially in response to other people's negativity.

[bah-pearl-cookie]

By the way, PTSD flashbacks aren't always "suddenly you're in the moment again". They can be of course but emotional flashbacks are a kind of flashback too (remembering the event and suddenly feeling the emotions you felt in the event) just in case someone needed to hear it

[shatteredmirror-sys]

people need to talk about socially acceptable abuse more. it's literally why we're a system. the spanking that people refuse to believe is physical abuse when there are multiple studies showing it affects kids just as much as any other type of physical abuse. the way a parent might talk down to their kid their entire life and make them feel like they cant make any choices themself or be independent that they only notice when someone else points out how their parent(s) talk too and about them. the parentification of the oldest kid(s) when they have a single parent. the unnoticeable praise towards the "easy" child that all the other children pick up on. the neglect the "easy" child has to go through. a kid being punished for going to their parent(s) when they mess up and need help. not being taught how to clean or cook or do laundry or even how to wash certain parts. it all destroys a kid and it was all socially acceptable in my family and in the communities i grew up in.

- 🐰

[lolthsword]

despite everything.

[chai-penguin]

On Isolation

[iwillsurvivethismadness]

For the little kids whose brains couldn't handle so much pain so they blocked out the memories of their abuse: you are valid. What they did to you was real even if you can't feel it like that. You are a real victim who deserves real justice. I love you so much. My inbox is always open for everyone who needs it.

[bpdmaxxer]

I might not remember but my body does

[ct-lambykins]

in my head want to be seen as sexually attractive like i want people to want me but i also dont want to be seen as sexually attractive and i want to be pure and i dont want anyone to see me in a sexual way

im so fucking conflicted if none of this happened maybe i could have at least been not mortified by my own sexual needs but it did happen it all happened and i cant look at myself in the mirror knowing i am a sexual being without feelings disgusted

[sparrow-the-tired-lesbian]

here’s a friendly reminder for survivors of any sort of abuse that

It wasnt your fault

You are strong

You didnt ask for it

No one gets to invalidate your experience

If someone invalidates your experience, you get to dump their ass

[floweyesque]

it's weird because i can remember the memories around what happened but not what actually happened. i remember a lot of hiding and crying for reasons i couldnt explain. i remember knowing things i shouldn't know at that age. i remember being so scared but i don't remember what i was scared of

[some-assholes-familiar]

Not an introvert, or an extrovert, but a secret third thing! (Emotionally neglected as a child and actively seeking out any scrap of human connection whilst having a low social battery on account of the autism)

[vexheart]

please do not accept the bare minimum when you know you deserve the best.

[broken--dreams]

Don't be greedy and accept more than your actual worth.

[vyvilha]

to all the victims of csa who have never told anyone. to all the victims of csa who don't remember, clearly or at all. to all the victims of csa who struggle with understanding if it was "bad enough". to all the victims of child on child sa. to all the victims of csa who are still repulsed to sex or even to all physical touch. to all the victims of csa who don't wish to "overcome" their repulsion to sex or physical touch. to all the victims of csa who freeze, who dissociate, who cry and rage easily. i love you i love you i love you. they don't know you. you know you. trust yourself. trust your body. you decide what to do with what happened. you decide how you feel. keep going

[ontheoutside-lookingin]

“She’s so sweet she’s always going out of her way to help others” quick someone give that girl all the love and safe space she deserves before being “sweet” (pathological people pleasing as a trauma response) destroys her and leaves behind a bitter empty shell of a person

[notgreatbob]

''i wasted those years'' who cares. you lived the only life you could've lived in those moments

[callmezeemonic]

You did the best you could with all you had and knew. That was then. Here is now

[roycohn]

convinced 99% of adult converts to catholicism are solely doing it as a fetish thing. like ohhhh you were raised protestant and you feel a need for MORE arbitrary rules with a shame and degradation-based bent and more authority figures in recognizable uniforms in your life??? should we throw a party should we invite jd vance???

[honourablejester]

I don’t know why that affected me so strongly, but I’m watching a youtube video on disasters on Lake Huron, and the first one involves a coal freighter that was lost in the White Hurricane of 1913 called the SS Argus. Everyone on the ship was lost. But it’s mentioned that the captain’s body washed up later, and was found without a life jacket. So they thought, based partly on testimony of another ship that thought they saw them go down, that it just happened too fast for him to have time to get his jacket. But then another body was found, that of the second cook, and she was found wearing the life jacket marked ‘captain’. And that’s …

It didn’t work. It didn’t save her. But it’s so very possible that he spent his last moments alive trying to save someone else, one of his crew, and they probably both knew that it wouldn’t work, that there wasn’t a lot of hope in a blizzard on the lakes in November, but he tried … he tried anyway. Even if it did nothing but maybe make her body easier for her family to find.

You know that Mr Rogers thing of ‘look for the helpers’? How many times has someone, facing the end, done something tiny and fragile and maybe hopeless just to try and help someone else? Whether it works or not. How many people went to their graves at least trying?

That has to say something about us. As a people. As monstrous as we sometimes (perhaps often) are, so many times we were also …

Whoever saves one life, saves the whole world.

And sometimes you can’t save one life, sometimes it doesn’t work, sometimes there’s no getting out of this for anyone, but … try anyway. Because it matters anyway.

And maybe no one will ever know. But maybe also some day more than a century down the line, maybe some idiot will be crying into her coffee because of what you died trying.

[beowulf22121]