#// abuse

[monsterblogging]

So, it finally clicked that while the average person does in fact broadly comprehend that people are neither good nor evil - they're good and bad, and have free will - they also can't understand why some people would fully commit themselves to completely awful causes or to being a terrible person throughout their entire lives. They can't really picture how this works, because they can't imagine themselves choosing to die on a hill of Being A Terrible Person.

This void in their comprehension is where the myth of the Ontologically Evil Person is very likely to come and settle in sooner or later, because it seems to finally provide an answer that makes sense of otherwise senseless cruelty and violence. Agonizing questions like "Why would my boyfriend spend so much energy on making me feel like shit and breaking me down?" "Why would this historical figure decided to kill all of these people?" and "Why would this guy go start a cult and murder everyone?" are finally given an answer, and the formerly-bewildered person finally has some peace of mind.

Because of this, the myth of the Ontologically Evil Person is incredibly hard to get out of people's minds once it takes root. For one thing, bad ideas are like bad habits; it doesn't really work to tell people to Just Stop With Them, because without something else to take its place? They're going to fall back on it.

And if somebody's been traumatized from abuse? The last thing they want to hear is that they're basically dehumanizing their abuser and that's not cool, because it feels to them like the other person is taking their abuser's side and telling them to get fucked. Even if this not what's happening, the survivor's brain is currently operating on fight/flight/fawn/freeze mode, and a brain operating fight/flight/freeze/fawn mode is keyed to making snap decisions to try and remove you from the danger as soon as possible, which means categorizing everything into black and white. This person couldn't care less about the history of eugenics right now; literally all they care about is being safe.

"Okay, so if the Ontologically Evil Person doesn't exist, how the hell do you explain those fuckers over there?" some of you are probably asking.

Here's the deal. Literally every human being alive can and will do terrible things if they're sufficiently scared and desperate. They're in no position to appreciate that nearly all asshole behavior can be explained by a lack of critical social and self-management skills, or by a lack of access to self-improvement (including being too traumatized to trust means of self-improvement).

People who are scared, insecure, and under high levels of stress will often cling to anything that makes them feel better, because they want to feel safe and secure and not in psychological and/or physical agony. (Stress does an absolute number on your body, too.)

Being reliant on a shitty behavior, belief system, or product for some measure of feeling secure and safe is how you get people saying things like "If I didn't act mean, everyone would just walk all over me!" or "I was really depressed before I found this, so if I gave it up I'm going to get depressed again, and I might hurt myself." (And there might be some truth to this one! This might indeed happen if they give it up cold turkey, and without finding an alternative!) It's how you get people conducting """scientific""" studies to """prove""" that their bigotry is totally justified and not at all irrational. ("Well of course these people are genetically inferior, they wouldn't be poor and disease-ridden if they weren't... what do you mean, systemic inequality and uneven healthcare access? No that's obviously fake and made up by More Bad People.")

People also act in unhealthy ways to deal with personal insecurities implanted by parents or society. You have people out there whose parents drummed it into their heads that second place was for worthless losers, or that no one would love them if they didn't look or act a certain way. You have people who absorbed the idea that acknowledging the basic humanity of shitty people means that they have to forgive them and personally help them get better and just suffer through the abuse in the meantime.

This is how people choose to die on the hill of Being A Terrible Person. They weren't ontologically evil. They were scared, and they thought they saw a fortress on the top of that hill that would keep them (and perhaps also their loved ones) safe.

[rayshippouuchiha]

One earlier anon shared that they feel they would be abusive to their children, so they have chosen not to have kids, and how people tended to say they should still have children.

My father was abusive towards me since I was four. He would choke me for "backtalking". He justified his behaviour by blaming his own father, who was even worse to him.

I have anger issues. Most people who know me, do not believe me when I tell them this, because I did a shit ton of therapy as a teen to get the issues under control. I have a hair-trigger temper, and although I never became physically violent when angry, I have been verbally abusive towards my mother and sister on several occasions. My family members disagree with me that my behaviour was abusive, stating that "I wasn't as bad as dad was" and "I apologized and realized what I said was wrong". I have said some terrible and unforgivable things to my mom and sister that still haunt me even after a decade.

I am absolutely terrified that if I had a child, I would lose control of my temper, and I would justify the abuse because "I wasn't as bad as my dad". My own mom and sister have told me that I should still have a kid, and I shouldn't let the fear stop me. People really don't listen to you when you say your reason for not wanting a kid is because children deserve a better parent than you would be able to be.

It takes a lot of work and bravery, in my opinion, to really and truly know yourself and accept the darker parts of yourself like this and then take responsibility for them.

And, once again, I do agree that people need to accept someone's answer when it comes to this sort of thing. No is a complete sentence, not an invitation to negotiate.

[bonefall]

I haven't read Breezepelt character arc fully, but what in the banana world is the logic of "you're an evil adult, therefore you deserve all the abuse you received as a child"... What??? How do people get those ideas to begin with? Jesus

Most of the time in situations like this, the person just starts with wanting to defend a character they like. 90% of the time this is the abusive man of the week, because due to the nature of WC they liked them as an apprentice and don't like the idea that they're A Bad Guy now. SO they work backwards so their favorite boy is reasonable.

I will say it bluntly; I think the impulse is cowardly and I don't respect it.

Do you relate to a character with flaws that causes them to hurt people? Boohoo. There's no law that says you're only allowed to like perfectly moral characters. Drop the black and white thinking and realize that all people, even people you like or have positive or admirable traits, have the capacity to hurt others.

This is how we get the greatest hits like "Maybe Ashfur trying to murder his ex's kids is her fault actually" and "Perhaps Crowfeather was only an abusive father because the child had bad vibes." You look like a darn fool.

That said, I think the saddest stan behavior I see is when the stan in question was abused themselves, and hasn't unpacked it. It's unfortunately very common.

"Your father getting annoyed that you have inconvenient needs like thirst and hunger is what all dads do!"

"They didn't mean it, so the child is obliged to feel less bad about mistreatment."

"It's not abuse if they only hit you once/on the correct body part/soft enough to not leave a bruise"

"It's normal to feel constant guilt and dread around your parents."

"Abuse is discipline; bad kids deserve to get hit." (Always with the quiet implication; "I know this because I was a bad kid, I made them hurt me.")

It's good to keep in mind this fandom skews young. A lot of them are still repeating the excuses their friends and families made, and that last one is remarkably similar to the Crowfeather claim we're talking about. Child abuse is common, but most people don't want to think badly of their parents.

"A child abuser is an uncaring monster, but my parents are good people who just made some mistakes" -girlie who has not confronted the innate human capacity for harm :X

Sometimes we visit banana world. Other times, we live in banana world.

[traumasurvivors]

Of course threats can be traumatizing. They’re a form of emotional abuse!!! (No hate at you. It’s just an obvious thing).

Maybe to you it’s obvious. For a lot of us, trauma imposter syndrome is a real thing.

Threats are a form of emotional abuse but I find the more specific my posts are, the more they help people.

Saying “your trauma is valid if it came from emotional abuse” is so valid and I’ve said it but it leaves a lot of people going “huh but what about what I went through? Does it count?”

By being more specific, the people that have experienced whatever I’m talking about find it more believable because it’s specific and doesn’t leave as much room for wondering whether their own experience counts.

[serialunaliver]

I think one thing that's hard for people to grapple with is it's impossible to eliminate all abusive individuals from any given society. Of course certain systems encourage and make it easier to achieve, but there is no perfect world in which no one is abusive, so prevention of abuse shouldn't be punitive measures but rather creation of an environment in which abuse is hard to get away with--an environment more focused on community support than individualistic isolation of families. The fact that there are horrifying child torture cases that occurred in average suburban homes by neighbors who suspected nothing just because they haven't even talked to or acknowledged the people living right fucking next to them is crazy.

[amaditalks]

Gaslighting isn’t the same as lying.

Gaslighting also isn’t lying a lot, or lying and deflecting the lying by shaming the victim for not believing the lie.

Gaslighting is a long con. It is a practice of ongoing emotional/mental abuse, that doesn’t just involve lying, but manipulating or altering someone’s reality in order to make them question both the truth, and more importantly, question their own mental and cognitive wellbeing.

The reason that it’s called gaslighting is because the tactic was demonstrated in a 1944 film called “Gaslight” starring Ingrid Bergman. In the film, Bergman‘s character’s husband tries to make her have a mental breakdown.

He tells her that she is having blackouts (she’s not) and doing things that she didn’t do.

He steals things from her, and tells her that she lost them herself.

He makes noises in the attic of the house, then tells her that he wasn’t in the house at all.

He steals things from other people, puts them where she will find them, and then tells her that she stole them.

He puts his pocket watch in her purse and tells her that she stole it from him.

He isolates her from the world by telling her that her behavior is too erratic to be safe near others.

He encourages their housemaid to be cruel to her and to repeat his lies about her behavior.

And, to apply the title, he repeatedly causes the gas lighting (it’s set in 1875) in her bedroom to go dim, then comes into the room, and when she says that the lighting is dim, he says, no, it’s perfectly fine.

It goes well beyond just lying. Gaslighting is a setup to make the victim so confused that they’re unable to trust themselves and their own perceptions of the world around them or even themselves.

It’s beyond time to stop calling run of the mill dishonesty gaslighting.

[its-your-mind]

I really really really love how the show is depicting Gabe. In the books, Percy doesn't think much about Gabe - he sucks, he's a dick, and he's smelly. Percy doesn't understand why his mom stays with him, but he’s a kid - he doesn't put too much thought into the ins-and-outs of the relationship. It's not even until the end of the book that he realizes that Gabe's been actually hitting Sally.

And so all we have for him now is the time we spend with Gabe at the start, and…

This is supposed to be his and Sally's apartment. Sally's the only one who brings in income, but the whole house is Gabe's. Only the one chair in front of the TV, even though Gabe said that he and Sally watch the Knicks together. His trash is all over the house, his poker table was leaning up against the wall... And he obviously feels like he is entitled to touch anything in the apartment, up to and including things that are explicitly Sally's:

And then, when Sally tells Gabe that she and Percy are going on their trip to Montauk...

He goes into the conversation expecting a bribe, and Sally already has one prepared. This is obviously a song and dance they've done plenty of times before.

Because abusive relationships rarely, if ever, look horrible from the outside. And they're not absolutely awful 100% of the time, either. Most abusers aren't cartoonish villains, nor are they awful to their spouses with every word they say. Abuse is often subtle, hard to notice, only clear in retrospect and when you consider a lot of individual instances of slightly off-color behavior all together.

This version of Gabe Ugliano isn't as obvious an abuser or villain as Smelly Gabe of the books, but he is more true-to-life - taking advantage of Sally, invading her privacy, the joint understanding that she won't be allowed to do something for herself and her son without his tacit approval. All of those are key hallmarks of domestic abuse, of a partner who has gained control over the relationship through emotional manipulation or physical threats and/or violence.

[mzminola]

The more I see the phrase “eldest daughter syndrome” the higher it raises my hackles. It’s just parentification. It’s parentification and if you call it parentification it’s a lot easier to explain, and it’s a lot easier for the younger siblings or only children and children of any gender to identify it happening to them too.

Like I get that oldest sibs are more likely to be treated as accessory parents of their youngers, and I get that in a lot of families girls are pushed into caregiver roles, but fucking hell man parentification can and does happen to any kid regardless of birth order and gender, and while situations vary from family to family, there isn’t really anything the parentified oldest daughters are experiencing that the other parentified kids aren’t.

[kaijuposting]

"Saw traps for people with moral OCD" is a phrase that has embedded myself into my brain because, well, Saw traps for people with moral OCD are everywhere.

Stuff that basically amounts to...

"You have to listen to my opinions on [issue], or else you don't care about [issue]. (Constantly talks about how people like you are the absolute worst.)"

Anything that's functionally like, "you have to let me tear you down over things you can't control or you're a bad person."

Anything that's functionally like, "you have to let me vent to you whenever and however I want or else you're a bad person."

"If you enjoy X media/trope, you just hate Y people."

"Everyone knows that X thing is harmful/hateful; if you engaged in it, it's just because you were fine with perpetuating hate/harm."

"You should have just known better/should know this already!"

This thread over here talks about the inherent issues of putting this kind of stuff out there. The TL;DR is that it really only works on people who are mentally unwell and have poor boundaries, while just pissing off everyone else. It really doesn't matter if you're technically correct; you're still attacking people, and that means they're not wrong to block you.

I think that many of these Saw traps are created when people effectively write posts directed toward people who don't want to help, rather than the ones who do. Like, if you catch yourself writing an angry, shame-laden post, ask yourself: who are you writing it for and what are the odds you're going to change their minds? If your mental image is some smug fuck or angry reactionary, you're writing for the wrong person. Write for the person who's curious, who's willing to learn.

Also? Work on figuring out how to transmute negative feelings into positive, encouraging rhetoric. EG:

"Why is there no X positivity?" -> "Let's hear it for X!"

"No one cares about Y problem!" -> "Hey, we need more recognition of Y problem" or "I haven't seen many people talking about Y problem, so here's some info on what's up."

"If you don't reblog this, you don't care about [group]" -> "Please reblog this, it would mean a lot for us [group]."

And if you're really super duper frustrated and want to vent with a lot of nasty words and sentiments? Consider taking it to a private vent channel or a journal or somewhere that a stranger with moral OCD/scrupulosity isn't likely to run across it.

Remember, most people don't want to hurt anyone. More people are ignorant than malicious. People naturally want to do the right thing, so if you feel like you have to guilt them or shame them into it, there's probably a fundamental communication issue somewhere, or they simply lack the context to understand why what you're saying is so important.

[thatdiabolicalfeminist]

No one is doomed to abuse people. There isn't an "abuser gene" or "evil chromosome". There aren't "cursed bloodlines".

There's a culture that frequently enables, romanticizes and eroticizes abuse, and individual human beings who choose to take advantage of that, or not.

Even someone who has abused others in the past has a decision about whether or not to continue that harm. Further abuse isn't inevitable, it's a choice.

The idea that abusers can't help it just further enables abuse culture. If someone is abusive, they are making a choice.

[rayshippouuchiha]

(tw: abuse, self-harm, suicide)

to child-free anon: you are absolutely valid. my mom has a similar problem. she's great to anyone who could enact consequences on her, but she made my and my siblings' childhood a living hell. it was an incredibly toxic environment to grow up in. i was regularly hit, yelled at, and manipulated by suicide threats, etc., all because a single thing ticked off my mom. the first time i contemplated suicide, i was 9. the first time i considered about killing her, i was 13.

as a child, i was convinced that she had two separate people in her brain, and i only wanted the "nice one". overall, she was an good mom. she took me on walks, baked with me, helped me with homework, and all the things a parent would normally do. sometimes she would be giddy and playful like a kid, and other times she would beat me for writing too hard in my notebook. i was deathly scared of the other half, constantly on edge for when it would come out.

she fucked me up so bad, and i loved her the entire time, because she was the only person who ever stayed with me. i craved her approval so viscerally in everything i did, but nothing was ever enough. she wanted everything from me, and i could only give so much.

i'm absolutely terrified of turning out like her because i can recognize so many of her behaviors in me too. i get auditory overloads easily, i bottle my anger up, and i have graphic intrusive thoughts that i can't always push away or ignore. my mom used to get severe light migraines and would scream for hours on end when she had them. i always think of them whenever i get panic attacks from an overload, and how much worse i would be if i had to deal with a kid during my migraines.

i adore children, but i would break any child i had myself. my peace and quiet is one of the few things i value above all else, and if someone breaks it, i wouldn't be able to restrain myself no matter how much i loved them. i know my mom despised herself for how she treated us, but she still did it.

you're saving someone by not having kids, and you're saving yourself too. never let anyone try to convince you otherwise.

Trauma is absolutely a completely valid reason to not want children, no matter the source. Just, I think it's so much more responsible to see these kinds of things in oneself and choose to take steps to contain any possible damage that could spill over onto others than to just ignore it or think it doesn't matter.

[traumatizeddfox]

I WASN’T A BAD DOG

I WAS A SCARED DOG

[self-loving-vampire]

I feel like a lot of people don’t really fully grasp the idea that abusive parents exist and are both common and, to a degree, socially acceptable.

Like, they may be aware of the fact but have not yet actually integrated it into their worldview, personal beliefs, or policy proposals.

[neuroticboyfriend]

As an adult still living with their abusive parent, I often find that affirmations meant to empower me are unhelpful at best. They often feel like they're overstating the amount of agency I have as an adult; I've spent my entire life being abused. It's all I know and I have a lifetime of conditioning and nervous system damage to show for it.

All that doesn't just go away now that I'm older than 18, and neither do the material circumstances that keep me here. Even though I have more legal rights and have grown since I was younger, I am still not in control by the very nature of being the victim in an abusive relationship. So, for those who relate, here are some affirmations that might hit different:

My abuser does not have my best interests in mind, even if they think they do.

I am my own person; my mind and body belong to me.

My feelings are justified, and I deserve to feel and express them.

I am doing what I need to survive, and that is all I need to do.

I am doing my best given the knowledge, resources, and support I have.

I am the only person who can decide what is best for me.

My situation is unfair and wrong. I deserve to be happy and safe.

I do not have to engage in toxic positivity; that will only hurt me.

As long as I am alive, there is something good in this life for me - no matter how small.

I have inherent rights just because I exist.

I shouldn't have to deal with this on my own; I deserve support and protection.

Everything I need is something I deserve. Everything I deserve is something I need.

If any of these don't resonate, feel free to discard them. Everyone finds comfort and empowerment differently.

[teaboot]

While I'm happy that the word "gaslighting" is more known than it used to be, and that people at large are learning to recognize what it looks like, I feel like we need to be careful not to turn it into something soft and casual we throw around off the cuff without meaning.

Being gaslit is psychological abuse that fucks you up very badly, very slowly, at such a gradual pace that you don't usually know it's happening until it's already re-wired your brain.

If you're unfamiliar with the term, "to gaslight" is to intentionally persuade someone that they cannot trust their own perceptions of reality. It's a destabilizing form of manipulation that leaves you constantly anxious, off-balanced, confused, and dependant on others.

This is done by lying about events that have happened or about things that are happening, invalidating feelings and observations, and either denying, refusing to acknowledge, or deflecting away from hard facts.

As someone who has experienced gaslighting as a form of abuse, this is what I remember from when I didn't know anything was off:

"Oh, I must have forgotten what really happened."

"I'm just not seeing it from their point of view."

"Everyone has their ups and downs. This is normal."

"I guess I wasn't thinking about what I was doing."

"I must have been wrong."

This is what I remember from when I first started realizing something was weird:

"How come every time I'm convinced they did something wrong, they just talk to me a few minutes, and I end up asking for their forgiveness? What has me so convinced I was right in the first moment?"

"I should start writing things down when they happen, so I can go back and check later when I'm confused."

"If every relationship like ours (familial, romantic, platonic) works this way, how come I never hear about it, or read about it, or see it anywhere else?"

Getting out and adjusting to the real world is hard, too, and comes with rapid swings of unfounded guilt, shame, fear, anxiety, and self-deprication that are completely unfounded in reality.

You've been conditioned to believe that you are entirely helpless and unable to think for yourself, possibly "crazy" or otherwise fundamentally impaired, and that there is a singular source of guidance that knows exactly what is right, and all of a sudden that pillar of support has vanished.

The immediate "after" that I recall looks like:

Constant uncertainty. Because nobody is there to tell you what's real and what isn't, you approach every situation thinking at it from all angles. Every question has fifty possible answers and most of them are wrong and you don't know which. If you choose wrong, the world will end.

A sense of helplessness. You feel that nothing you do is correct, and it's easier to make no choices at all- or you make wild, reckless, impulsive choices, because you feel you have nothing to lose.

Memory loss. I don't understand this one, but it's not like memoriescare being erased, but more like... you're so used to treating your memories as dreams or imaginations that you reflexively dismiss anything you recall as fake, and you can't believe anything you recall because you don't think it was real. Your abusers voice is in your head, wiping things away and telling you that you did the wrong thing. And you believe them, because they're the only constant you can rely on.

Missing the abuser, or the abusive dynamic. Because you know now that it wasn't healthy, but at least you knew where you stood. As long as you said the right things and acted the right way, agreed and obeyed and did as they expected, you felt like thevworld made sense. Now you have to figure out which parts of you really are broken, and which parts are working fine in a really weird way, and it's like tuning a piano when you've never played one before.

The long term "after"- for which I can only speak for myself- looks like:

Having to double-check, triple-check, and continue checking hard evidence of an event before responding in an active way.

Consulting with trusted friends to verify that your observations are legitimate and that your perceptions are valid. Following up with them to see if someone is really angry at you, or if you're just projecting anger onto them because it's what makes sense to your old pattern.

Obsessive collection of "evidence"- saving pictures, writing detailed journals, making recordings and video, never deleting emails or old texts, because you still don't quite trust yourself all the way and you're afraid that someone will cause you to doubt yourself again.

Continued self-doubt and being "gullible": I have straight up seen people flip me off to my face in front of witnesses and then immediately tell me, "No, I was just waving", and my first instinct is to believe them. For a few seconds, I *really do* believe them. Your brain is so trained to latch onto what people tell you to believe that its really, really hard to hold onto information that you already have.

Learning to take ownership over your own actions. (I didn't mess up because I'm "crazy", I messed up because I'm a person and people do that.)

Instinctively seeking approval. (Takes a lot of work to remind myself that I don't exit to make people happy, and that some people suck ass, and I can tell them to piss off.)

I don't intend to invalidate anyone currently struggling with this- if you feel that something is wrong, it probably is. That's the thought that got me out. Trust that feeling that something isn't right.

I just want people who don't know what to look for to know what gaslighting *actually* looks and feels like, so they don't just roll their eyes and think, "Oh, that word doesnt apply to me- I'm not some snowflake".

('Cause we all saw what happened with "triggered", right?)

[thepeacefulgarden]

It doesn't matter what trauma they've been through. It doesn't matter what their ex did. It doesn't matter what their parents did/didn't do, or what their family of origin was like. It doesn't matter that they're under a lot of pressure at work. It doesn't matter what kind of day they had. It doesn't matter what mistakes, if any, you made. It doesn't matter what, if anything, you did wrong, or what, if anything, you could have done differently. They're not entitled to treat you badly.