
Sad lady
Further to a blog I wrote earlier, the invalidation abuse prolonged sufferers receive from others, is very damaging.
So, here’s a bit more of why.
I’ve had prolonged abuse, from birth, abused by parents who deliberately and intentionally turned me into a child sexual abuse victim, and I have been groomed, repeatedly and forced into abuse, including considerable sexual abuse, as a child and as an adult.
During this, everything was about the abusers. All of them. What they wanted, what they decided to do, how they wanted to hurt me, about their dark needs etc…And all the while, I wasn’t allowed to protest, to say no, to complain, to voice my emotions. There was never any consideration about me, how I felt, the pain I endured.
Because of all this severe abuse, severe suffering, severe pain, once I was 20, and moved away from family, away from all those abusers, I just suppressed it all. I had no-one to share all that with, no-one I could talk to, no-one to help me.
So, I did what society says abuse survivors should do, and ‘moved on’, ‘tried not to think about it, ‘didn’t act the victim’ and I worked, provided for myself and looked after myself. I had PTSD, I’ve had it since being a child, but again, I just ignored it as best I could. Which was the worst way to deal with it.
20 years of all this suppression, and at 40, I had a breakdown, because the brain cannot suppress that much trauma indefinitely. Then I had no option, but to have to start to deal with it. 3 years later, I am still processing, still trying to heal.
Some of the people, who I have told about my past, have been so deeply invalidating of my emotions, that it so painful. I’ve had so many invalidating comments that I would be here all day listing them.
One example and this is a common church attitude….right in the beginning of my breakdown, I had a pastors wife almost dismiss it all and say ‘well your mother was probably abused too’. And this was said in a way that of course being a ‘church person’, that this should be my focus….to focus on my mothers issues….to focus on how hurt she is….to focus on forgiveness….and not be angry at her. And that because she ‘may’ have been abused, that was the reason, the excuse, the justification for the abuse to me.
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