If you’re struggling with accepting and overcoming the abuse you have faced with a friend, partner, or family member, it’s important to remember that you are the only narrator for your life. Nobody else knows the exact experiences you have had in the exact settings you have been in.
Often people who have abused others(intentionally or not) do not think what they did qualifies as abuse. The problem with this is that there is no qualification of abuse and often a tactic of abusers is denying that abuse was present. Abusers often believe that what they did or still do is not “real” abuse and often try to explain away what they did by using comparisons.
Abuse does not always happen in ways that are easy to identify, explain, or show to others. A lot of the time abuse happens in the form of continued manipulation, continued denial of others experiences/feelings in relation to things the abusive party has done, and the abusive party not taking responsibility for their actions or changing them.
Other, often not talked about, signs of abuse:
Withholding (this includes the “silent treatment,” refusing to listen, and withdrawing emotionally)
Telling the victim that their thoughts, feelings, ideas, interests etc are wrong/bad
Gaslighting; denying the victims experience and making them question their reality or perception, denying that something happened when it did
Insinuating that the victim is “crazy,” “hysterical,” or otherwise not capable of understanding situations
Using mental health issues the victim has to blame them for the abusers behavior or deny that certain things happened
Spreading rumors about the victim
Interfering in the victims relationships in any way
Talking over and/or interupting
Sources/resources: 1, 2, 3
The abuse you have faced does not fail to exist because your abuser doesn’t recognize or validate it. By continuing to invalidate your experience, they are perpetuating abusive behaviors and tendencies.
Your experiences are real, your narrative is not made up, and you are not wrong for recognizing what happened to you.
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