Processing Abuse

I want to use this blog to help process my feelings about my abuse. I hope to connect with other people who can relate so we can deal with these things together and know that we are not the only ones.

[nexus-nebulae]

shoutout to people who don't have a "before" the trauma.

shoutout to people who don't have any sweet or nostalgic childhood memories. to people who don't remember enough of their childhood to know what the before was like. to people who lost their innocence before they ever learned the word for it. to people whose pasts were too painful to keep around in any form. to people who only knew trauma, and don't have an idea of what life would be like without it. to people who can't long for "the better days" because there weren't any.

you deserve a good future. i hope it's there for you soon.

[unwelcome-ozian]

[borderlinereminders]

Please stop being so hard on yourself when you’re having a hard time. Even if you feel you’ve made so much progress and shouldn’t be having a hard time. That’s not how it works. It’s normal for things to fluctuate and you aren’t a failure. All your progress is not undone because things are hard now.

You deserve more compassion from yourself. You deserve more credit. And you deserve to be proud of yourself.

[uncanny-tranny]

Your life isn't a to-do list. You're allowed to exist, to take life as slow as you'd like. The dreams you have won't suddenly disappear. It's okay to stop and smell the roses, or to engage with "childish" things, or to recover, or do what you need to.

[healingchildhoodtrauma]

[daily-reminders-that-ur-enough]

Someday, it might take a while, but things will hurt less and then not at all. Things will still hurt in your day to day life, but you will find a community, a home, and you will find peace.

You deserve a happy, peaceful life.

[afeelgoodblog]

[sleemby]

[ID: A photo of a hedgehog in fall leaves by a tiny sapling. The hedgehog is emerging from a wooden bucket sat on its side. The image is captioned in impact font, the top text reads: “you do not suck at life.” Then the bottom text reads, “it is genuinely difficult.” / End ID.]

[firstgrave]

just as you do not need to forgive someone in order to grow past what they did, you also do not need someone’s forgiveness to grow past what you did.

you had a bad moment. a bad series of moments. you were struggling with mental health or addiction. you were selfish. you were an asshole. you made a mistake. whatever happened, you hurt someone you cared about.

you should make an effort to repair the harm done. you should take accountability, responsibility, face the consequences as a result. but maybe they don’t forgive you. they don’t ever want to speak with you again. they hate you.

that’s okay too. you are not forever tainted by their lack of forgiveness. you do not need to live forever with the weight of what happened on your shoulders. you are allowed to move on, too. you cannot deny what happened or the harm caused or even deny them their own response to it. but their response to it is not your responsibility, only your actions and their consequences are.

you are allowed to grow. you can change for the better. you can say “I did this, it was wrong and caused harm, and this is how I’ve changed” and that is a good, positive result you should move towards. forgiveness is not a requirement for growth. you should be grateful when it is available, but your progress is not dependent on it.

[processingabuse]

I think this is true, in that all we can ultimately do is try to be better, and carrying around guilt and shame forever isn't helpful in doing that. And I definitely think that there are people who really have changed a lot but still torture themselves for how they used to be and they need to know that it's okay to let go of that shame. HOWEVER, that's all based on the assumption that you feel guilt and remorse for your actions in the first place. This line of thinking shouldn't be used as an excuse to get out of feeling bad. "Feeling shame and getting their forgiveness is not necessary to further my personal growth" well sure but feeling bad about what you did to someone shows that you give a shit about how your actions affect other people and perhaps the reason they're having trouble forgiving you is because you're acting like you don't care that they're hurting. Don't sit in it forever because that just makes things worse for everyone but feeling remorse is something that you just SHOULD feel when you've deeply harmed someone, even if it isn't "helpful", if that makes sense?

[akindplace]

We will wade through every crisis like we have before. We endure, we keep going, and nothing is ever final. Everything can change, we just have to stick around to see it happen. Even when everything seems bleak, we persevere. We will find new ways to get through the bad times.

[recomvery]

Don't ignore your gut feeling. If something feels wrong in your gut, explore that, think about it, journal about it, especially before making big decisions. Don't discard your own feelings as unreasonable or crazy, they need to be considered.

[akindplace]

Beth Evans

[processingabuse]

Time to play my least favorite game ever: Is that little voice inside my head my intuition or my mom?

[processingabuse]

I had really bad mental health these past few days and I realized it might have something to do with the film Killers of the Flower Moon coming out this weekend. I think it genuinely triggered my cptsd, but I don't know how to make that not sound dumb. Leonardo Dicaprio and Martin Scorsese (their films separately and together) were my OBSESSIONS when I was in high school. Unhealthy, all-consuming obsessions. It was the first time I had an interest of my own without my parents telling me what I liked and what I didn't like. They had to approve of it or I would never have let my self like it in the first place, but once I had permission it was the first interest I had that I let myself run with at least in the privacy of my own brain. My teenage years were filled with constant chaos and abuse and manipulation and screaming and hopelessness and dissociation because I couldn't feel anything that I wasn't allowed to. But when I watched Leonardo Dicaprio act, when Martin Scorsese sucked me into the worlds he created, I was allowed to be sad or scared, I was allowed to escape. Not to a world more pleasant than mine, but to a world where brutality was artfully rendered and I could become briefly in touch with feelings I pushed away in real life because it wasn't safe there. I didn't have any agency over my own life, I made no decisions for myself, I had nowhere to go to escape the chaos and abuse, so I retreated into their films because it was the only way I knew how to cope. I've been away from the abuse for almost 4 and a half years now. I have a sense of self, I have agency. I'm struggling really bad with mental health every day, but I own my own mind and I can feel whatever I want at any time because I am a whole person, not a shell. It's been a long time since I've watched either of their films, not because I'm not still a big fan, but because it's just too painful. With advertisements and reminders of Killers of the Flower Moon everywhere it's gotten to me in a way I didn't expect. Even just seeing Leonardo Dicaprio's face in the trailers is making me feel a lot of feelings. And it's not like I freak out at every reminder of it, but the cumulative effect of seeing it everywhere I think really got to me. Even the smallest thing about it is like "Hey, do you remember when you were in so much pain all the time every day? Do you remember when this meant the world to you because your world was too horrible to articulate? Remember when this was a hollow replacement for being a person? Remember when you loved him because no one loved you? Remember when he was the only way you could feel?" They represent so many years lost to abuse, and the immense grief that comes with that. I'm free from the clutches of abuse and in a lot of ways I am in a much better place, but I still struggle a lot. And their films, for better or worse, filled the hole in my heart at least temporarily, and there's a part of me that (especially since it's gotten such rave reviews) is afraid that it won't fill that hole in the same way. Not that it should or needs to, I've matured and I'm not dependent on it, but there will be a kind of disappointment if it doesn't because it's kind of like a helpful tool that you don't want to use but you like knowing it's there. Or if it does will it be like, relapsing? Like if I get really into it will it be like I haven't grown at all? I almost don't want to see it (even though like objectively I very much do) because no matter what happens there's downsides. I'm also a little afraid that I might just... cry the whole time or won't be able to finish it, because if the advertisement causes me this much grief, what will the whole 3 and half hour film do to me? If I get a ticket I might buy one way in the back in the corner so I can feel free to just express all my emotions that I'm feeling, and I don't think I'll wait until streaming because then I probably just won't get up the nerve to start it or I'll stop in the middle. Anyway, hope this made sense and trauma is weird.

[furiousgoldfish]

Abusive parents can sometimes create the 'us versus them' mentality inside of their family, where they convince you that anyone who isn't raising their child the exact way they are, is stupid, ignorant, spoiling their children and making selfish brats out of them.

They also convince you that the world inside of their house, and the world outside, are two different worlds, and only the outside is 'the real world', and it's a place you, according to them, know nothing about, and would never survive in. Outside world is at the same time filled with dangerous individuals, who would hurt you (unlike your parents, who also hurt you, but those outsiders would hurt you worse, apparently), and filled with stupid people who know nothing and are to be insulted and humiliated (abusive parents will often degrade homeless people, minorities, addicts and anyone they deem less worthy, and you'll be stuck in feeling like at least you're not them, but at the same time scared you'll become them, and then you'll be degraded just like that as well.)

In this 'us versus them' situation, your parents are the smartest, the only ones who know what the 'correct way to live is', and the 'correct way to raise children'. They'll tell you how you're supposed to think, behave, speak and act. Their words are the highest truth and not to be questioned or criticized; any criticism will be met with hostility and attacks, and insisting that any other way of thinking would convert them to the 'non desirables' (see above about the minorities and homeless people).

And the thing is, this is a tactic that cults use to make people unable to leave. Convincing people that the thinking and methods inside are vastly superior and better, that anyone outside who doesn't follow their methods is stupid, tainted, incapable of normal life, and that people outside are simultaneously stupid and wrong, but also dangerous, hateful, capable of doing intense harm to you, that's how the cults terrify people into belief that they can never live outside. That it's both dangerous and wrong to even want to.

If you feel scared and incredibly anxious of living outside of your parents home, and your parents have encouraged you to believe those things, you've been exposed to cult-level manipulation to prevent your escape.

[processingabuse]

This, absolutely this, spot on, this is what happened to me. The only thing I would add to this is in my experience it wasn't just like homeless people, minorities, etc., it was... anyone who literally wasn't them. Anyone who lived their life *slightly* different from them. And sometimes my parents would be extra nice (in a judgmental and condescending way, not out of genuine kindness) to people who others may be more cruel to, just so they could turn around and say "see? we're clearly the best people, everyone else are uncaring monsters, you can never leave us."

[defiantsuggestions]

I don't entirely know how to word this but...

Yes, there are people out there who had good parents, who were difficult kids to raise. There are people who grew up hating the advice their parents gave, and then realized over the course of growing up that their parents were right.

There do exist members of the population were wrong as kids, who learned better, and have a good relationship with their parents as adults.

It's hard growing up. You're learning to be an entire person and a lot of times, even if the circumstances are perfect, relationships can be strained due to influences outside of anyone's control, and kids can blame their parents for things that aren't their parents fault.

Those people, who had good parents but had difficulties growing up...don't always realize that their experience isn't universal.

So, when they meet an abuse victim who is talking about their abuse or who has mentioned cutting off contact with their family, it tends to be their own experiences they draw from.

So they'll give advice like, "did you try talking to them," or, "but they're only looking out for you," or even, "but they're your family!"

Not because it's the right advice for you, but because it's the advice they would give to themselves.

They remember a time when they were furious with their parents over something they(the child) was in the wrong for, and they project that onto you.

They produce a solution to the wrong problem. They assume your situation is like theirs.

Made worse by the fact that a lot of people just straight up don't want to think about the fact that abuse exists so they tend to reject the possibility.

And it is frustrating, to be talking about something we've suffered only to have the other person take our parent's side without really understanding the situation.

But it's important to know that...they don't understand the situation.

Which means that their advice doesn't neccesarily apply.

Not everyone who is well meaning has good advice.

And...I don't know. There are also people who were abused who have internalized it in such a way that they think what happened to them is fine and that this is just normal. It's hard to tell the difference sometimes.

Human experience is vast and varied and there are a number of reasons I've been given bad advice and some of it was simply that the person I was talking to has such a widely different experience than I've had that they just...don't get it, and won't get it, and no amount of words I could say would express to them where the gap is.

[defiantsuggestions]

A lot of people in abusive situations deal with their abusers being unreasonable to unbelievable levels

Then when people outside the situation hear the story, they tend not to believe it because "no one would react that way. Have you tried talking it out?"

People who have never been in that situation simply do not understand, and their advice tends to lean toward solving a comunication issue

They think you can simply...talk it out with the person who is abusive toward you. They can't conceive of a world where you talk things out and it doesn't work.

They do not understand that you've spent your whole life talking it out. They don't get that there people who refuse to listen, and even if they do on some level have that awareness, they don't understand the power dynamic at play.

Abuse involves someone having control over another and abusing that control, which means a victim might not be able to leave.

Which, again, someone who has never been in that situation just might not GET the implications of that.

So you'll see the advice over and over of "just talk to them!" and it's not going to work because the people giving that advice think they're solving a different issue

[processingabuse]

This is EXACTLY it, you hit the nail right on the head. And I think there's sometimes the opposite problem stemming from this same misunderstanding, where someone will observe a genuine miscommunication issue and call that "abuse" because they can't imagine a situation where someone could be more unreasonable than that, if that makes sense? Like, they can't fathom the level of manipulation and control that happens in abusive relationships, like it seems unrealistic that it could be THAT bad. And they'll refuse to talk it out even if they should because they think that they "can't", because they don't know what something that truly can't be talked out looks like. And I'm not diminishing the effects of dealing with someone who is being very awful and unreasonable but not abusive, it's not that that's not a big deal. And I'm also not saying that you have to stick around when someone is acting like that until it gets to the point that it IS abusive and it's harder to leave. But I think a lot of people (luckily, because it means they haven't been abused) aren't able to see the difference between infuriating, frustrating, painful, and possibly even unsalvagable relationships and ABUSIVE ones.

[childish-husk-deactivated202504]

This is for everyone who feels like they're going crazy trying to figure out if they were/are being abused.

Not every insult sounds like 'your stupid' or 'your ugly'

Abusers may not say 'your just crazy' when they try to gaslight you. They may say things along the lines of

'you dont even try'

'if you were smarter you would ____'

'why can't you be normal?'

When trying to insult you

They may say something along the lines of

'Well I'm sorry that's what you *thought* I did'

'you need a therapist your mental illness is changing your perception'

'why do you argue everything'

When they try to gaslight you

Lots of abusers try to be subtle about how they insult and manipulate you so they can hide behind plausible deniability.

"we weren't trying to insult/manipulate you we'd *never* do that! I can't believe this is what you think of us. That just shows that *you're* in the wrong. You need to apologize"

Sound familiar?

They're *trying* to make you to feel crazy, it lets them keep getting away with it. And if you think 'they wouldn't do that *on purpose*, it must be unconscious' they want you to think that to. It also doesn't excuse their behavior even if it is unconscious