abuse survivor bingo
Tag: trauma
Abuse does not make you a broken monster
Our culture often sends the message that if you were abused as a child, you’ll inevitably abuse your children.
It’s not true. I know multiple people personally who grew up in violent homes who have chosen not to be abusive. They experienced violence as children; they do not commit acts of violence as adults. It is possible, it is happening, and people making that choice deserve more respect and recognition.
It’s easier to learn how to parent well from growing up with good parents. It’s also possible to learn from other people. I know this because I’ve seen people do it. To some extent, *everyone* learns from people other than their own parents. (Including their own children. Kids are born with minds of their own, and people who respect their children learn a lot from them about how parenting can and can’t work.)
It’s a matter of degree. Everyone needs some degree of help and support in learning how to parent; some people need more help and support. Abuse (among other things) may mean that someone needs more help learning parenting; it does not mean that someone will inevitably become an abuser.
I think we need to talk about this more. Abuse survivors should not be treated as broken monsters. Violence is a choice, and abuse survivors are capable of choosing nonviolence. Abuse survivors are full human beings who have the capacity to make choices, learn skills, and treat others well.
This is really, really, really important.
I wish this was talked about more. Sometimes maladaptive coping mechanisms are just embarrassing and awkward, but sometimes they are things which are genuinely cruel and manipulative. They may have helped you survive when you were trying to endure abuse, but they aren’t appropriate to every conflict/desire to reach a goal you encounter.
A note on the topic of trauma that I personally found helpful in accepting the idea that I am a trauma victim is that one of the most widely accepted facts in the field of trauma research is that abuse is often not the common factor in whether somebody will develop ptsd.
Many people can go through awful things without developing trauma based disorders as long as they receive compassion and support in processing those events as they happen. The most common factor in developing something like ptsd is emotional neglect. And emotional neglect on it’s own can be enough.
Whatever you went through was enough I promise, you’re not overreacting. Abuse and neglect are traumatic at any level, you don’t need to have gone through the worst possible experience you can think of to develop ptsd. If it hurt you then it hurt you.
…..oh.
And to support that, the number one determining factor on how badly something affects a person is how they’re treated afterward, not how objectively bad the event was. They’re called resiliency factors.
It looks like this:
Horrible brutal traumatic event + Family and community support + legal amelioration + closure and therapy and help
ONE MILLION TIMES MORE LIKELY TO RECOVER THAN
Event that the sufferer may think “seems minor” compared to what others have been through + Family neglect and abuse (you deserved it, name calling, support the abuser) + no legal means + denial and stifling and no therapeutic support
I have been raped, I have been abused by someone who was supposed to be family to me, and I have recovered and gotten my life back together. I have psychiatrists, psychologists, best friends, lovers, and family who support me. I did not get legal justice, but I got the person(s) out of my life.
My friend was repeatedly verbally abused by his step-parent, and when he was abused and hurt by others he was blamed for it by that parent. He had no support and no one to talk to about it for over 10 years.
He still feels guilty for even being affected by it and I’ve had long talks with him about how it isn’t “nothing compared to” what I went through.
You are not wrong to be upset. You are not wrong to feel the effects of trauma. Your hurt cannot be measured against anyone else’s. Your resiliency is your own and your situation is valid to you. Perception is everything. The worst thing that ever happened to you might ostensibly be less bad than the worst thing that ever happened to me – but it still is what happened to YOU.
Trauma is so predictable that we can make tidy little equations out of it. The ones above are good, but the ones I’ve seen are a little simpler. Something like:
Overwhelming Experience + Isolation + Shame = PTSD
I don’t often see abuse posts about the opposite spectrum of post-abuse behavior, and it’s. Kind of a bummer bc those are still things people experience.
So shout out to :
people who feel like they have to aggressively defend the things that are important to them because they’re so used to it being torn down and taken from them – even if a friend was just kidding, it’s so hard to see it as just kidding.
People who are constantly on high alert for a fight and had to learn to treat everything like a debate because it was the only way they could stand up for themselves. People who have a hard time rationalizing not everything is an attack because everything used to be an attack.
People who are mad and furious over what happened and get completely consumed by rage no matter how hard they try to let it go. And who have to deal with people telling them they’re making it bigger than it was.
People who have to constantly front as being a badass or aloof because they can’t be seen as vulnerable in any way.
People who constantly fear they’re just like their abuser because they lash out at a moment’s notice to defend themselves
There’s a ton more things but I’m on my break and these are just things I experience that I know a lot more people relate to omg. It’s hard to unlearn aggressive means of self preservation and it hurts to hurt people after you’ve had to experience that hurt and it seems impossible to get over or unlearn those things but you’ll do alright it just needs time and patience and there’s nothing wrong with being angry.
Today I was chatting with a coworker who I knew had been in an abusive relationship in the past. She was laughing as she told me and another coworker about how her ex never let her leave the house. Like she was for real cracking jokes about his jealous rages and how she wasn’t allowed to so much as set foot outside their door if he wasn’t with her, and the way she was telling it was funny, so we laughed along. “That’s why I enjoy doing the little things now, like taking the bus and going to the bank,” she said, and we all giggled because who likes public transportation and doing errands, right?
Then she got serious for the first time since the conversation started, it lasted only for a few moments, but I will never forget the one sentence that she said without smiling: “I’m going to die before I let that happen to me again.”
There was also this one rape victim whom a relative of mine represented in court. The rapist’s lawyer tried to discredit her by pointing out that she’d laughed while giving her testimony. She was eighteen years old on the witness stand, telling a judge and a room full of people about what had been done to her. She giggled because she was embarrassed about having to describe the graphic sex acts, and she nearly lost her case because of that.
I have classmates who laughed while telling me about old men who stole kisses from them. Who made jokes out of stories about their boyfriends screening their messages and forcing them to do things they didn’t want to do. I have known girls who were molested and manipulated for years, who shake their heads and snicker at their own past selves, how could I have let him do that to me, I was so naive, hahaha. This one woman reenacted for me, complete with dramatic gestures and voice impersonations, how her ex-husband who was under a Temporary Restraining Order scaled the gate of her house with a gun, and how she’d locked herself in her bedroom and screamed at the police over the phone to come NOW. Both of us were in stitches at the end of her tale, clutching our stomachs in mirth.
Just because they laugh doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
I can laugh about my abusive ex now because I’m not with him and will never have to let him near me again. I also sometimes wake in a cold sweat because I dreamed that I didn’t leave him. Laughing about trauma is an odd coping skill, but it is super common because it helps people stay sane in the face of awful things. We laugh to keep from crying.
People laughing at something that causes a stress response is normal. It’s literally your brain trying cope and survive by trying to make you less afraid of the stressor. Don’t ever doubt yourself about what you’ve experience, just because you laughed. Laughing is a completely valid response to something horrible, and your experience is just as valid whether you laugh or cry (or sometimes both at the same time) about it, and don’t let anybody try to tell you otherwise.
But like at the same time, Christians who have certain jobs need to throttle back at work because for real it gives me hives being told “Have a blessed day!” by someone like a receptionist at a doctor’s office. It happened today and while she was super-sweet and very obviously genuine (in context, I think she was actually trying to make me feel safe) it was still one of those “…welp…” moments. I’d just told her two minutes before that my girlfriend would be coming to the appointment with me. My cat was out of the bag, no takesie-backsies.
Christians have a very nasty track record with violence and obstruction against LGBT people like me, so I suddenly am aware that there are people around who might hate people like me, and they have the ability to make my getting medical care difficult or even impossible.
I get that even if they didn’t SAY it, they would still have the same biases, but I don’t have much choice in who I see, so I’d be stuck with them regardless, and I’d rather not have the anxiety of worrying about it. My other choice is not disclosing that I’m queer if it comes up, and even when not saying anything about it is an option, which it often isn’t, it’s not one I’m willing to take. I have to choose between being safe and being honest, and that’s shitty.
It can be hard to imagine, I think, for Christian people, what it’s like to be afraid like that, because to Christians, Christianity is a great thing and Christians are great people.
But like the first psych doctor they wanted to send me to for my disability reevaluation worked out of a Christian therapy office (okay) and their clinic policy was “gay people are against God.” (Not okay at all.)
My disability eval was going to be performed by a dude who was comfortable telling children they are wrong to be gay.
I called up the disability office the day I got the letter and got another doctor to do the eval. Thank goodness they were willing to reassign my case after I told them there was “a potential conflict of interest that might threaten the doctor’s impartiality.” Thank goodness I had the spoons to make the call and the presence of mind to phrase my issue the way I did instead of just yelling “MOVE I’M GAY.”
I mean, y’all understand, I could have gotten my benefits yanked if I’d gone in there and they’d taken a dislike to me based on the fact that I’m not cishet. Legal protections aside, there is no impartial third party monitoring that appointment, and they have total control over what goes on their paperwork. There is literally nothing keeping them from recommending I be denied. For disabled people, legal protections are only effective to the extent we can afford to enforce the law with our own money. Money that, if you are on disability, you obviously do not have.
Without my benefits, especially medical coverage, I cannot survive. So like.
Yeah.
A lot is riding on the goodwill of people who have been shown to historically have very little goodwill for people like me. I don’t like being reminded of it.
Y’all are cool, I love y’all so so so much, but y’all are also really fucking scary in large groups, and when one of y’all has power over me, I never know whether I can trust you and that shit is scary.
Fucking police your own, thanks.
Yeah I don’t think many Christians realize that most LGBTQIA+ people have had someone be all “have a blessed day!” and be super nice when they didn’t know that the person wasn’t cishet (or, heck, even Christian) and then turn into something completely different upon finding out.
Like. I get the whole “they will know we are Christian by our love” thing but having seen people turn from super-nice into “OMG you’re not a Pure individual and I MUST SAVE/SHUN/CHANGE YOU!” It is fuckin’ scary. So yeah people have every reason to be cautious when they find someone is not only Christian but the type who says blatantly Christian things to people. Because saying that so openly gives an implicit assumption that the person you are speaking to is also part of that group.
Or something. I am having a rough day and I don’t think I’m wording well.
You’re getting at something though. The implicit assumption that the person you just told to have a blessed day is also Christian. (Or at the very least, theist of some kind.)
Like, that’s part of what’s so disturbing. The other person is in this bubble of “Of course this is welcome because this is obviously a Good Christian Person like me!” and then, when you bust that bubble, they damn well could be nasty as hell about it – even nastier because they had tried to be nice, but you just had the gall to be rude to them by being super-gay.
And it’s also just … awkward … to have people assume I’m Christian, when I’m a member of a group that is explicitly shit upon by mainstream Christianity. Under most circumstances it doesn’t bother me and I take it as it’s usually intended: kindly. But in situations where my utter queerness is GOING to come up, and these people have the potential to be obstructive in some way, it makes me uncomfortable. Like with the doctor’s office the other day. I’m going to go into that same office in a couple of weeks for some really personal shit, and I’m bringing my GF with me, and now I’m worried that there will be an issue.
I’m like 90% sure there won’t be, because frankly two women together are not nearly as threatening as two dudes, and people’s ability to gals-being-pals us is frankly astonishing, but the thought is now in my head and because I have a for-real anxiety disorder, it’s not going to leave.
I know that receptionist absolutely did not intend for it to cause that reaction, I’m not even angry. I just wish people thought about what they say, and how it comes across.
A lot of dog training stuff is really hard for me to read. I recognize, intimately, both the tactics used by trainers and the reactions recorded by them from their dogs, from my own experiences as a child and teenager – in the place of the dog. They were not positive experiences for me, and I am doubtful that animals who are displaying the exact same reactions to the exact same stimuli are happier about it.
Like, I’ve experienced constant rewards on the basis of whether I’m focusing on someone else for long periods of time. It does work on humans, despite our complex brains. It’s probably just as effective on us as on dogs, honestly – which is not surprising, since “clicker training” was initially developed for use on marine mammals. (It has since been decried as cruel in that context.)
It’s horrible. It left me with severe PTSD. It’s been years since I got out of that situation, and I’m only sort of recovered. The rewards and constant demands for focus were much more traumatizing than being hit was.
I don’t think we have a good idea of what ways of teaching are non-traumatizing for dogs; and I do think that we have to do something for them to live with us safely; and that because of their numbers and degree of domestication the only realistic options are living with us or not at all.
I do think that we can safely assume that being ‘on’ all the time is stressful.
(Yes, I know many dogs display positive emotions and appear happy and eager during training and this kind of thing. So did I.
You’re rewarding the happiness as much as the behavior, for one; and once you’re used to this kind of thing, you are eager for it – because being rewarded tells you you haven’t done something wrong. The rest of the time is a kind of constant gnawing anxiety that you’re misbehaving. As a result, it tends to produce constant attention and physical proximity, with the dog/child constantly monitoring your emotional state and actions, and growing slightly frantic if prevented from doing that or denied positive reinforcement.
The positive reinforcement results in a temporary relief from the anxiety, which feels intensely pleasurable for a brief period before the anxiety comes back. So, you seem happy and excited; it’s the result of a constant and erratic back and forth between pleasure and fear.)
#it’s also worth pointing out that all of this is based on behavioral theories of cognition #which are a) totally outdated and disroven #and b) associated with horrific ethical breaches because they involve the idea that there is no autonomy or internality in animals #and consequently combine a sense of freedom from ethics in the reesarcher with a lack of concern for the wellbeing of the researched upon #they’re currently used mostly for torturing autistic kids
this is like actually how i feel about everyone i have ever liked all the time
YEP.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 