#while we are reacting to something we OBVIOUSLY find viscerally disgusting

[cyanocoraxx]

i know millipedes have become the more "socially acceptable" myriapod but the pitting of millipedes against centipedes i see all the time is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. ueughhgh. i adore millipedes, i think they're neat little guys, but millipedes are hardly comparable to centipedes and it's unfair to lump them together as the "good animal" vs the "evil animal." i see countless comments online saying how ugly, disgusting, creepy, and evil centipedes are.

so, centipede propaganda:

anecdotal evidence suggests they have good memory capacity, able to remember escape routes and the location of prey. cool

they can learn to tolerate handling by humans and some appear to enjoy being petted by humans. obviously we can't ask them if they like it but if a lightning-fast worm made of knives doesn't like something it's going to tell you. a centipede just won't allow itself to be in a situation it doesn't want to be in. but obvs disclaimer: don't handle a centipede without experience and handle at your own risk. research bite reports. etc. be sensible, bites can be serious

each pede has its own temperament. some are comparatively chill and lazy, earning them the nicknames "lazipedes" while others are reactive and defensive.

they feel safest under rocks and leaves (in their banky…) if mine are stressed sometimes i just plop a leaf over their head and they settle down instantly

not all of them JUST eat other animals. some dabble in fruits too! the fruit enjoyers .

they spend a lot of time grooming their antennae. you think that sleek aesthetic maintains itself? their relaxed side esp when grooming is fascinating to see. the creature you likely only see darting away from you at 1000mph is also capable of Chilling the fuck out.

they have terrible eyesight. imagine a centipede with tiny little glasses. don't you feel better now? anyway the fact that they don't see well is part of why they sometimes react so viscerally to things. you probably would too if you were small and preyed on by big things.

centipede mothers fiercely protect, groom, and nurture their babies. they do so for longer than they "need" to in some cases. in a study a variety of pede species were found sharing nest sites in forest canopies, demonstrating a lack of negative spatial associations. this was unusual because we typically expect these guys to not be keen on sharing.

not all bites are due to "aggression" but more from using their fangs in an exploratory nature. think of them as kids but instead of hands they have fangs. it's slippery on you so i'll grab on gently with my venomous fangs. i don't know what you are yet so i'm gonna reach out and test the Texture. you smell salty, i'm gonna lick you. etc.

they are ouppies.

even if you think they're ugly they come in so many colours so there's gonna be one that suits ur taste. there's baja blast blue. ridiculously bright red. piss yellow. candy corn black & orange. if you can think of a colour combo there's probably one out there.

anyway. our empathy for animals shouldn't only extend to those we find socially acceptable or easy enough to anthropomorphize

[inkskinned]

probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.

we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."

at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.

the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.

the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.

what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.

here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.

[anthracenes]

Rivers | Chapter 2

Tags/Trigger Warnings: Non-Con/Rape, Self-Harm, Abuse of Authority, Anxiety, Childhood Trauma, Abduction, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Panic Attacks, Past Child Abuse, Victim Blaming, Dissociation, Forced Orgasm, Creampie, Kidnapping, Anal Sex, Oral Sex, Non-Consensual Blow Jobs, Humiliation, Crying, Angst, Dark, Psychological Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Grooming, Fucked Up, Slut Shaming

[read on AO3 here]

He’s floating. 

A detached, dreamy sensation that leaves him unsure if he’s even alive in that moment.  

His ears are buzzing, obscuring the sounds that would otherwise reach them. His eyes are wide open, but he can’t understand just what he’s seeing. All the while, he can vaguely make out touches on him—pressing against his body, sliding against his skin. 

His lips part to say something, but he doesn’t recognize any of the words that tumble out of him.

Everything feels... so far away, for some reason. It’s almost as if his brain is not quite attached to the rest of him: aware of all of these sensory inputs, but nothing to process any of it with. He feels himself lost—deep in a haze so thick it suffocates him. Through this fog he could feel himself peering down at a body that is simultaneously his and not his. Lying inside a body that is simultaneously his and not his. His head spins between these two perspectives, over and over, and it isn’t long before the rest of the room is spinning along with him.  

I must be dreaming, he figures. It must be a dream. What else could it be otherwise, unless of course he’s—

 He never even finishes that train of thought before it is pulled out from under him. Richard is suddenly made aware of a warm, wet heat enveloping in between his legs—a sensation so foreign, it's enough to snap him out of whatever reverie he found himself in. It pulls him up, up, and out of the thick mental haze and, in a moment, he’s back to himself in a flash.

 ... Something is not right. He’s panting, reeling as the rest of the feeling in his body comes in much too hot, much too quickly for comfort. His head pounds, as swift and erratic as the heart hammering away in his ribcage. His stomach is in knots.  

Springing his eyes open, Richard ignores the burn of the lights as he turns his head downwards, towards the source of the sensation.  

 “There you are,” Rivers smiles, wolfish. Predatory. “Nice of you to finally join us, Dick.”

 Below him, he sees Rivers sitting comfortably on his knees. The mattress is dipped beneath the weight of both their bodies as the older man is nestled right in between Richard’s trembling thighs. A fine thread of saliva hangs from his former teacher's lips down to Richard’s own cock, which Rivers thumbs with one hand. 

“You gave me quite the scare there, Dick—with your eyes wide open like that and nobody home! For a minute, I was worried I'd have dragged a corpse right into my bed. Wouldn’t want our precious reunion to be spoiled by somethin’ like that now, do we?”

Scrambling to get away, Richard yelps when he finds that—to his horror—he’s in fact unable to. His wrists and ankles refuse to budge an inch from where they remain, fastened tightly to each of the bedposts surrounding him. It hits him right then and there just what position he’s in: tied up and spread eagled on Rivers' bed. 

Naked.

He suppresses the urge to vomit when he feels a hand on his bare thigh, slithering down towards his ankle.

"Oh, you do have to forgive me for this, though," his former teacher says, voice dripping with mock pity. Rivers traces the flesh underneath the thick rope, gently rubbing it with the flat of his fingers as if to soothe the chafed skin beneath it. 

"Didn't want to have to be so rough like this. Not on our first day back together, anyway," he chuckles, licking his lips. "Pity. But I really have no other choice, Dick. Wouldn't want you runnin' away on me again, after all. Not before we get to the fun part." 

"Please, sir..." Richard whispers. He feels small, so ridiculously small, spread out before Rivers and reduced to begging like this. Like he's 13 again, on the same bed, except this time there's absolutely no sane part of him that wants this. He takes a shuddering breath, lips quivering as he's on the verge of crying. "Please, please just let me go..." 

"Let you go? After all this time?" Rivers tuts, shaking his head. He's grinning from ear to ear, clearly amused, as his steel grey eyes meet Richard's soft brown ones. "Now why would I do that?" 

"It's been far too long since we've played together, Dick. I’ve missed you.” 

The former teacher takes Richard’s balls in one hand and his cock in the other. He fondles them as he strokes his former student off—slow and gentle.

“And by the looks of things, seems as though you miss your old man, too," he smirks, eyeing the half-hard cock he already has in his hand. "Is that why you've come back, after all these years?”

"No!" Richard practically shouts, trembling. He can’t help but writhe on the bed from Rivers touch, disgust washing over him as he feels the faintest flickers of arousal building within him. "No, stop… I... I don't want this... please.."

"You don't, do you?" Without any warning, he takes the cock in his hand and wraps his lips around it, earning a choked gasp from the young man. He wastes no time, swirling his tongue all around the head, the shaft—doing clever things with his mouth that has Richard all but squirming. He swallows the rest of it in one swift motion, down to the hilt, and sucks him down until he could feel his former student twitching in the back of his throat.

With a loud smack of his lips, Rivers pulls Richard out of his mouth, just as quickly as he's sucked him down. He licks the saliva slathered all over Richard's member. 

“Mm... Fuck," Rivers moans, lapping up the precum that beads at the tip. "You always were a naughty little liar, Dick—but I can always count on this part of you to be honest, can't I?”

Richard shakes his head, blinking away tears. He could barely process everything that was happening to him, let alone why his traitorous body was responding in such a way. He knows he doesn't want any part of this. He doesn't.

He doesn't.

And yet despite everything tells himself, here he is: clearly reacting as if he did. Inconceivably, undeniably erect, just from being molested by his middle school teacher. 

“Do you remember all those times we’ve played ‘Doctor’ together? How you used to fake tummy aches for me, just to get a dose of my special medicine after school?” Rivers chuckles. He unzips his pants, pulling out his own cock out while remaining almost entirely clothed otherwise. 

“You really were just a little slut even back then, weren’t you?”

Richard shuts his eyes. “I was only a child…! You took advantage of me!”

He's shaking. Anger, fear, shame, guilt—visceral waves of emotion, boiled and bubbled all into one. He says this, but deep down Richard knows the blame is only his, for falling for it in the first place. For giving in. He carries that blame everyday, hates himself everyday for it. 

The scars on his outer thighs are a testament to that.

"... I didn't... know... I didn't know any better..." 

Why must he have been so stupid? So reckless? If only he had said something sooner, back then. If only he had better sense to run away. 

If only... If only...

“Oh? You didn’t know any better, did you?" Sneering, Rivers takes Richard’s erect member in hand. He strokes it, running his fingers all over it—taunting him, with the shameful evidence of his body's own depravity. "How'd you go about explainin' this, then?”

Richard recoils, turning his head away.

“Admit it. Your body can’t lie, Dick. It loves me. Loves havin’ your teacher take care of you like this. And as a teacher, who am I to deny what my star student wants of me?”

From within his pocket, Rivers pulls out a small packet. He tears it open, dribbling lubricant all over his hand, his fingers—getting every inch, every corner of it wet before palming at his own cock. 

“We have a lot of catchin’ up to do. Ten years of it. And since you obviously pretended to be sick just now, why don’t we start 'ere? I’d love to be pumpin’ your tummy full of my special medicine again. For ol’ times sake.”

Richard’s eyes widen at that. He takes to his frenzied thrashing again, straining against the ropes as searing panic floods his veins. 

“Please, please, stop...! I don’t want this! I don't want to—!” 

He screams as Rivers penetrates him anyways, forcing his hole to stretch around him as he brutally shoves his way inside. The lube barely helps—he’s never dared to be intimate with anyone ever since, and as a result Rivers feels much, much too big to take like this. Even now, the man is only halfway in and already Richard is stuffed to the brim. He feels it much like being torn open and split in two, right down the middle. 

“Fuck… You feel so fuckin’ good around me, Dick…” 

Richard’s body jolts with every thrust. His head lolls back and forth, sliding to and fro on the pillow, occasionally hitting against the headboard. Hollow gasps are forced from his lips with every inch forced deeper inside, as if the air there is being physically punched out of him to make room. 

”... So fuckin’ tight...”

He’s dizzy from it all. Lightheaded. The world around him starts fading around the edges, swimming in and out of focus. Every breath feels more and more sharp and labored, and he distantly wonders whether he might pass out from the lack of air altogether.  

Eventually Rivers bottoms out. He grips his hips tight as he holds himself in place, balls deep inside of Richard. With his palm, he traces the visible outline of his cock jutting out from within the young man’s body.

“There. Finally, all in. You’ve done so well, Dick—takin' all of me in so well. You really are my star student after all,” Rivers murmurs. He gives a punctuated thrust, forcing yet another breathy gasp from the young man. “You’re suckin' me in so much 'ere, too. Must’ve really missed havin' me inside of you, huh?”

Richard shudders, too weak to protest. Despite the pain Richard still finds himself just as aroused as before, his cock not even flagging once throughout. He's so ashamed—ashamed of how he had blindly landed himself in the clutches of this monster yet again. Ashamed of how he’s reacting no differently to Rivers even now, as an adult. No matter how badly he may want to, Richard himself can't deny the way his body is responding to the positive attention—the almost-comical way his nerves light up at the slightest praise from his former teacher.

Just as disgustingly eager for it as he had been, years ago.

“Mm, but what kind of teacher would I be if I'd neglect my own student?” The older man flashes him a toothy smile. “It’s not enough to just give you your special medicine, clearly. If we really want to have you all better...”

Rivers starts fucking him again. This time, however, he’s much slower in his pace. Careful, almost gentle even, as if aiming for something in particular. He's working himself into Richard—taking his time to explore different angles, feel out his insides, until eventually—

Oh.

  Ohh—!

Pleasure suddenly shoots through his spine. It has his trembling body arched back as far as the restraints would allow him. The sensation melts away at his frayed nerves, shorts out his brain with the sheer heat and pleasure of it all. From the corners of his vision, Richard swears he could see literal sparks of white.

Gasping shallowly, he slowly looks up at Rivers. He knows what’s happening to him—knows from experience what his former teacher plans to do to him—and he prays to the God he no longer believes in that it’s somehow just not going to happen this time. That he's somehow going to be spared from it this time.

That his rapist doesn’t strip him of this last remaining thing he has.

"There we are,” Rivers sneers above him. The older man drags his tongue across Richard’s neck, licking a wet stripe up towards the shell of his ear. ��That felt good, didn’t it?"

Rivers merely chuckles when Richard shakes his head.

"Don’t lie, Dick. I know it does. You think I can’t see you, squirmin’ around my cock like it’s the best thing you’ve felt in the entire world?”

Rivers hits the same spot in him, again and again, as if to force his point. Richard is half-moaning, half sobbing as he's thrusting in and out of him at a relentless pace, much too overwhelmed to stop the filthy noises from slipping through his lips.

“God, look at you," his former teacher murmurs. "You may have grown up to be an even worse liar all these years, but some things sure never change, huh?”

He can’t think. He can’t think. Any thoughts that might try and bubble up to the surface are almost immediately lost before they even get there—knocked out of him with each thrust, like the air from his lungs. It's hard to hear anything past the sound of his blood rushing loudly through his veins, and the slick, filthy sounds of skin slapping against skin filling the room does little to help. All the while his brain struggles to catch up, his body is on fire. The flames of arousal flickering in the pit of his stomach is stoked further and further, spiraling out of control until Richard is simply feverish with it. 

“There, that’s it... What a good little slut for me. You must really want your teacher to pump you full of my special medicine again, don't you? Breed your tight cunt so well, make you feel so good...”

Richard is helpless against the onslaught to his senses. He feels himself on the knife’s edge, muscles drawn tight as the cock shoving inside of him threatens to make him spill. Below, he could feel himself dripping all over his stomach, his thighs, with each sinful drag to his prostate. Richard shamefully tries to close his legs, but only succeeds in drawing more attention to them. 

“Oh? You’re gonna come for me soon, aren’t you?" He smiles when Richard shakes his head again. "Dishonest as ever, I see. Here—don't you worry. Just let ol’ Mr. Rivers help you out with that...”

A hand reaches down between his legs. Fingers smear his own fluids across his member—slowly coating the head of his cock with it, gently thumbing it right into his slit—all while the assault on his prostate only continues. The sensations of pain and pleasure coupled together this way is crushing, and before long, it sends him over the edge completely.

"That's it... there we go..."

With a shout, Richard's orgasm is ripped unbidden from his body. He's coming harder than he's had in a long time: spilling ropes and ropes of white across both their bodies as his former teacher continues to fuck into his oversensitized body. 

He slumps, defeated, while Rivers finishes inside of him not long after. The older man is placing a kiss on his belly, his thighs—clearly enjoying every bit of the satisfaction he derives from taking Richard apart completely like this. 

"Now, now... there's no need to cry anymore," he murmurs. A thumb wipes the tears that silently flowed down his cheeks. "After all, we can finally play with each other again."

Rivers smirks as he kisses the broken young man on his bed. 

  "Welcome home, Dick."

[transadvice]

"How can I be more attracted to my trans partner?”

I got this question in my ask box, but I’m putting it behind a cut because the question itself deals with and expresses transphobic feelings. I also talk about transphobia and internalized transphobia in my answer. I just don’t want you to have to deal with it if you’re trans and it’s not the right day.  Cis ppl with trans partners: Read below Trans ppl: YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL, SMASH THE STATE

The question: my gf is trans and i love her so much. i've been with her for two years while she was out and transitioning socially and i support her and adore her. however now she's started taking hormones (a few months in now) and i feel myself becoming less attracted to her. i am sexually attracted to the typical "male" body and the typical "female" body, but her combination of the two - a very masc body with small tits now - puts me off. idk if that's something to tell her or to try to overcome on my own, because i want a future with her and i want to support her... but how can i tell her this without hurting her and making her feel "not womanly enough"? i can't see telling her this going well... it's been on my mind for months now and i don't know what to do. i feel like a horrible person My answer: Don’t tell her. She knows. Look: I've been in this situation from various sides. I have been the "you", the person who wants to be attracted to someone and who thinks the reasons I'm not attracted to them are bullshit, but also I just can't talk myself into feeling pantsfeelings I don't feel. And I have, even more specifically, been the "your girlfriend," the person who begins transitioning and taking hormones in a long-term relationship and who is told by their long-term partner "I am finding myself less attracted to you as your body changes, but, like, it's totally my problem, I'm gonna work on it." Let me tell you, it was incredibly hurtful! It was a huge blow to my self-esteem at a moment when I needed it most. Like, here I am really excited about all the changes happening and wanting to tell my partner about them with pride and happiness, and instead they react with tepid support plastered over visceral disgust. The feeling that as I am becoming more "me," my partner was becoming more repulsed by me, was SOULKILLING. Even though it wasn't their fault - they couldn't control what they were attracted to and what kneejerk reactions they had in the microexpression moments before they put on the expression they WANTED to have - it had a really super negative effect on me to be in that situation. It made me feel like "the real me" was inherently repulsive. 

I am hesitant to encourage you to "work on it." I'm just not sure how well it will work??  I think the following two ideas can both be true:  1. Sexual attraction is a deeply-ingrained impulse that is unconscious and difficult or impossible to change.

2. Sexual attraction is informed by culture, and often reflects toxic and unkind attitudes of that culture (e.g. transphobia, racism, misogyny, homophobia, fatphobia, etc.) 

This obviously poses a huge issue for a lot of people. We want to be kind and inclusive, but our attractions don't always play along with our intellectual beliefs. And we can't necessarily make ourselves be attracted to people we're not. 

You can try; and it might work, eventually, sort of! I'm inspired by Lindy West's project of trying to see fat people as attractive (for self-love purposes) by a sort of exposure therapy, signing up for lots of fat fashion blogs and whatnot, exposing herself to tons and tons of positive and happy and sexy images of fat people. She talks about this in her book Shrill and in a This American Life episode called "Tell Me I'm Fat." This is the only example that comes to mind of someone positively changing their aesthetic taste, and even that is not about sexual attraction but about self-confidence. Plus, it took a hell of a long time. Years, I think. I don't necessarily want your girlfriend to feel like she is waiting on what might be a years-long project for you to rewire your sexuality, especially since it might not work, especially since being your attraction-changing guinea pig is probably hurting her in big and small ways in the meantime.  I am also concerned on your behalf, that trying to force your sexual tastes into a particular direction may lead to you becoming alienated from your sexuality. In the past, when I've tried to force myself to be attracted to someone I'm not because I liked them and I wanted to date them and/or they liked me and I wanted to return their affections, my body has responded by becoming sexually numb, and I think I am basically asexual... until that relationship ends, and then I realize, "Wait, I'm not disinterested in sex, I'm disinterested in sex WITH TAYLOR." (not their real name) 

And I don't think the attempt to force it for so long was good for me OR for Taylor. I mean, once we broke up, we started dating people we actually were attracted to, and those relationships just worked a lot easier for both of us. Just because I was not attracted to Taylor, it doesn't mean there wasn't someone out there who would be. 

And just because my ex, who I was with when I was transitioning, became less attracted to me as I became more masc, it doesn't follow that I was becoming less attractive. There were, it turned out, plenty of people who found me MORE attractive the more I transitioned. There were people who found me uniquely attractive in my androgynous state! But as long as I was with my ex, I couldn't find them. And it was really hard not to internalize my ex’s attitude, their palpable cringiness, and feel that, "I must be getting less attractive." After all, it confirmed my existing worst fears!

When you are a trans person, society is already telling you in a hundred different ways, "You are not attractive." "You are not even a person, really." It is SO CRUCIAL for us to love ourselves and prove to ourselves that good sex beyond the gender binary is possible. But I just don't see how that will happen for your girlfriend as long as she is dating someone who has to try to force it. 

I also want you to understand that you are not necessarily “not attracted to trans people.” I don’t want you to take that on as a source of shame, nor do I want you to write a Tinder bio that says “cis ppl only” or anything like that. You’re not feeling attracted to THIS trans person, but you might still be genuinely attracted to some other trans person in the future, who knows? One of us is not all of us.  Bottom line, I want your girlfriend to be with someone who WANTS HER. Who doesn't want-to-want her. Someone who doesn't have to try, doesn’t have to work at it with homework and projects, doesn’t have to force themselves. Those people are out there! And I want that for you, too: to be with someone you don't have to work to want. Someone you just WANT.  Unfortunately, I'm not optimistic that can happen in your current relationship. 

[sarahburness]

Healing from Abuse: How I Stopped Hating The Man and Learned to Listen to Myself

“Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.” ~Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

We’ve just passed the year anniversary of an event that has greatly changed our country. The shock of the election results last year sent waves of powerful emotions rippling through our nation.

Personally, I felt the effects as intense and immediate grief. It was as though I had just lost my dearest companion.

I had days of shock, despair, feelings of intense cold with physical shaking and episodes of vomiting and nausea, followed by weeks of sleepless nights, spontaneous sweating, nightmares and feelings of imminent danger. Everything felt like a threat. Everything felt like an unbearable reminder. It was all so devastating…and so embarrassing.

I was ashamed of how deeply I registered the experience and found it difficult to talk about even with those I loved. I was confused as to why it felt so intense, why I felt choked when I tried to speak of how I was feeling, and assumed it was something wrong with me. I was the living example of the liberal snowflake.

As I began talking to others I realized that I was not alone in this experience and I began to be curious as to why it registered so deeply with myself and some others, and yet did not in some of my friends who had similar political ideologies. They were still disappointed and disgusted with what had happened, but it did not register in such a visceral way.

Personal and systematic abuse shaped us all in invisible ways. The answers I found to why I related so physically to the event go back very far into my personal history, and if you believe in such things, my ancestral history also.

As a small child family gatherings held a sense of dread for my sister and me. While we enjoyed the food and presents usually involved, there was also the regular ritual of uncle Joe.

Uncle Joe would call us floozies and comment that our legs were too skinny, our knees looked like washerwoman knees, and no one would find us attractive.

There were also the sneak attacks of him grabbing us and holding us down and tickling us while we screamed for him to stop. It was always in the middle of the room with everyone watching, and him narrating the scene, saying how much we really loved it, how silly we sounded screaming stop because we were laughing, and everyone could see we enjoyed it.

At the beginning and end of gatherings he would demand a hug and kiss, didn't we love our uncle?

I remember feeling helpless, humiliated, and ashamed for my tears. It was expected for us to swallow our feelings and put on a happy face. We needed to be polite.

If any adult came to our aid or defense I do not recall it, and I'm sure if anyone did they would have also been told that they were being too sensitive. He was showing his love for us, and why didn't they appreciate it? We should feel lucky to have an uncle who loved us so much.

This kind of story is so commonplace, so ubiquitous, that many may read it and still question what was wrong with that situation. But this is how the very damaging abuse called gas lighting works.

The perpetrator takes advantage of someone weak or vulnerable. They deny the victim from having a voice in the story, then re-center the story to be about themselves, about how great and wonderful they are or, conversely, how they themselves are being abused in the situation. And they mostly are not even aware that they are doing it.

Even in writing this down I feel the tension in my body rise. I feel the tremors involuntarily start in my limbs, y breath gets shallow, and I have trouble even wrapping my head around the words to adequately explain the experience.

In Psychological Harm is Physical Harm Nora Samaran writes of how this kind of abuse shapes the brain and how someone can react to this behavior for the rest of their life. The systematic silencing of one's voice and denial of one's reality can cause someone to become incapable of talking about it.

Uncle Joe was not the only person in my life who behaved in this way. It was everywhere, from the doctor who told me that it didn't hurt when he burned off my warts with dry ice, to my father who told me to quit crying or he would give me something to cry about, to the teachers who seemed to always ignore my correct answers, but hear the boy behind me who repeated what I just said as if it was his own idea. It was on television, in movies, in the music I heard on the radio.

I internalized the patterns and found myself over and over in the same frustrations, the same endless arguments, the same feelings of invisibility.

I sought out the dynamic in my relationships, sometimes in more obviously abusive partnerships, but often in the subtle and almost invisible forms of minimization. I felt like I was talking, but the people I was talking to didn't seem to register what I was saying.

It was like being caught in a nightmare, where you are trying to speak but what comes out of your mouth is unintelligible. You know what you are trying to say, but what my partners heard was something altogether different. It was crazy making.

Because of the systemic normalization of minimizing and denying the feminine perspective, I came to deeply distrust my own mind.

I did not have to even be told my perceptions were not important; it was done in the subtle shrugging off of my suggestions, the deep sigh that made me feel my words were ridiculous, the automatic response of the males in my life to say “yes, but…,” “ I don't think you get what's going on,” “you are misunderstanding,” even when I was describing my own feelings or experience.

And the many years of work I did getting a handle on my own anger issues and automatic reactions made me super sensitive to the claims that I was the one being too aggressive, making too big a deal out of something or just being mean.

I automatically took on the blame and responsibility of any argument. I was being irrational, I was not being clear enough, the words I used were hurtful; therefore, they were invalid.

Mathew Remski discusses this quite eloquently from the male perspective. He talks of the behavior of minimizing being so embedded in his make up that it takes continuous concentrated effort to even notice when it is happening. And that it also takes the help of his partner continuously pointing out when it happens.

It is a lot of work to be constantly vigilant monitoring our behavior, and it can feel almost impossible to overcome. I know because I, and most other people who have had the experience of personal or systematic marginalization do this every day with our own behavior. The constant rewriting of our own experiences to fit within a system that cannot accept our true feelings, which center the collective narrative on a cis, white male perspective.

When the campaign happened, the behaviors I had deep visceral reactions to became public. Instead of being hidden away in the most intimate relationships or invisible private conversations, they were being played out on a very public stage.

I felt myself reacting to them all as if they had happened to me personally (because they had, just not by this particular person).

When one of the most powerful positions in the world was given to a person who was so blatantly abusive and disrespectful, who openly mocked his victims, who rewrote every story so the blame was scattershot anywhere but his direction, who played out the usually hidden abuses so many of us feel intimately on a scale so huge it permeated the globe, it felt to me that the years of hard work I had done to reclaim my identity had been wiped out in a single night.

It validated the claim of every person who had told me I didn't know what I was talking about; if I was uncomfortable it was because my expectations were not reasonable; if I felt abused, hurt, ignored it was hurtful and unfair to the person I was accusing; that pointing out my pain or the pain of others was downright impolite and my behavior. The mere fact that I had a perspective of my own, was intolerable.

I found relief through somatic therapy. Somatic therapy works directly with sensations of the body and translating them into the emotions that we may be storing there. It requires one to become present in the now, opening to the deeply buried layers that bubble up from the subconscious when we have knee-jerk reactions and strong emotions.

Translating the subconscious reactions we have into conscious and conscientious actions creates the space to make our hurt, and the hurt of others visible. To do this I had to dive into the depth of the grief to see where it stemmed from, not just place it was most recently triggered. This was a place that made every fiber of my being long to run away, numb out, cease to exist.

But the leaning into the pain instead of running away allowed me to recognize and accept my own feelings and reactions as tools of learning. I had to relearn to trust my instincts and see myself as a reliable source of information. I learned that I am valid, my feelings are important, and I have a right to be heard and to take up space.

I saw the ways I was complicit in my own harm. I had given up the right to my own perspective, internalized the doubt that my experiences are real, automatically responded to my strong emotions as unreasonable, and I had agreed that the feelings and needs of others were more important than my own.

When I saw that I had agreed to these things subconsciously, I was finally able to decide for myself that I did not want to do these things and could make the choice to stop.

It was and continues to be hard work. But now I listen when strong reactions come up, and instead of automatically silencing them I ask, what they are here to tell me? My anger, fear, guilt, depression, despair, all have a message they are desperately trying to get me to hear.

With deep listening my reactions can be transformed into conscious actions. Actions that let my voice be heard, centering my own story and needs, and allowing others to express what they need to express as well. It also gives me a very low BS tolerance threshold.

In claiming my own story I suddenly found it intolerable having it minimized in any way and could no longer be silent when it was.

This is a deeply inconvenient perspective to have. Going against the grain of society and allowing myself to be impolite while remaining as compassionate as I can muster leads to many awkward and uncomfortable conversations. It leads to conversations where I have to put my personal safety on the line in order to stand up for my personal integrity.

There is also the need for great delicacy and diplomacy. You cannot hope for others behavior to change when you make them the enemy. We all have the capacity to hurt; we all have the capacity to heal. I am the victim of abuse in cases related to my gender, and at times, my age, but have also been the perpetrator in cases where my privilege, be it from my white skin, my middle class upbringing, my citizenship etc. have blinded me to the ways I have contributed to the minimization and abuse of others.

Learning to have compassion for myself and my own tender emotions also requires me to have compassion for those who have harmed me. In the cases of my intimate circle, these are people I love and respect, and I want to be able to still love myself and need to allow for others to love themselves. I see the great hurt many of the people who have treated me this way carry around, you do not abuse without having first been abused yourself.

Unfortunately the abuse of toxic masculinity (the culture of oppression, patriarchal values, or the many names this behavior is known by) has become so embedded in our culture that we do not even recognize it as abuse. It is the norm; it's just the way it is.

It is invisible to the unconscious eye, until we make it visible. We are all damaged by it, but some are made to pay a dearer price, and some are allowed to gain privilege.

Those that gain privilege may have less of a motivation to change the patterns and a harder time seeing the ways they do harm and the ways it benefits them. It takes a lot of self-awareness and the ability to make yourself vulnerable. Accepting the responsibility of having harmed others and making amends is a very painful truth to accept, and so many will avoid this at all costs.

And this responsibility is passed down through the generations. If one generation cannot make amends for the harm they caused, the pain, guilt, and responsibility are handed down to the next, only the further it goes from its origins, the more subconscious it becomes, and the more difficult it is to bring the surface and recognize it.

But this is also the way it is healed, once and for all. It is not appealing work to dig deep into the ugliest depth of our suffering, to name the ways we have suffered, the ways we have caused suffering, the ways we have allowed both things to happen. But not doing it makes those part of ourselves most in need of tender care the least visible.

So in this year when all I really wanted was for this guy, who made all my alarm bells go off, to shut the hell up, I was moved to look at all the ways I had let this weak and damaged person, and so many others like him, convince me I had to shut the hell up. I lovingly listened to my own story and convinced myself to speak up instead.

About Dr. Lisa Klieger

Lisa Klieger is a Five Element Acupuncturist (MAc) and a Doctor of Medical QiGong (DMQ China). She uses decades of clinical and personal experience to bridge ancient wisdom with modern sensibilities in order to guide sensitive souls to trust their innate wisdom and embody resilient self love. You can visit her on Facebook and at lisakliegeracupuncture.com.

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The post Healing from Abuse: How I Stopped Hating The Man and Learned to Listen to Myself appeared first on Tiny Buddha.

from Tiny Buddha https://tinybuddha.com/blog/healing-from-abuse-stopped-hating-man-learned-listen/

[faithfullyfalse]

#this is true#writeblr#warm up#relatedly for some reason one of our Favorite Jokes#amongst the Siblings#is like - ''this is so good u will love it''#while we are reacting to something we OBVIOUSLY find viscerally disgusting#like we will be actively retching and be like ''nooooo it's so good''#to the point that i sometimes get nervous if someone outside my family is like oh u should try it its good#(obvi we never force each other to eat anything. we are all just curious birds and#like. we're GONNA try the new thing.)#edit to answer why we had so much vanilla:#my mom is a very good cook and we LOVE to bake. so she just had a lot of staples in the house.#it's one of those things that's like. have u ever continuously thought ''ah i should get butter im probably out''#even tho u are not out of butter. so u end up with like 5 years of butter.#my mom would do that in a costco but like with vanilla extract#to be fair we WERE always using WAY TOO MUCH bc we were kids#so like she was right to stock up#ps. yes we were VERY sick after this lol i just didn't want to include it in the post in case ppl had an ick about that#u can tell it's real bc we knew "oh no we fucked up that's too much vanilla to waste'' but our reaction was to just. keep drinking it#> sibling understanding that vanilla extract isn't free > knowledge mother doesnt mind if we use it for milkshakes#> sibling choice to maybe get in a loophole of ''not wasting it'' if we drink it bc that's the same as using it (not throwing it out)#listen bud i was like 13 and my sister was like 9#when my mom discovered this we. got in. A LOT. of trouble. a lot of it. a LOT of it.#3rd edit bc i guess it isn't clear - i am 1 of my brother's 2 little sisters#i am the middle child#out of all the ways i have had to explain a post before being like ''did u forget a middle child can happen'' is my favorite

probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.

we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."

at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.

the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.

the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.

what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.

here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.