My Abuse Story is Better than Yours

Everyones’ story is different and so is every abuse survivors’ story.

I admit that I am absolutely guilty of this: someone mentions a terrible thing they went through in their life, a break up, the loss of a job, a fight with a family member and they make it sound like it is the worst thing that ever happened to them and all you can think is: – if that is your worst, you wouldn’t survive one day of mine. As an abuse survivor, sometimes this can make you realise that maybe the majority of people in your life, have no idea what your ordeal really meant for your life and how much it has impacted you.

When it comes to abuse, of course there is no better or ‘less bad’. However, there are certain topics and certain groups of survivors, who seem to be more in the spotlight than others. For instance, when the type of abuse falls into the range of one of the big ‘-isms’, like sexism, racism and ageism. Sometimes though, labelling it is not that easy, and while all abuse is bad, being able to categorise things often makes talking about them easier..

Many people think that abuse has to look a certain way and it can be frustrating to hear others talk about things like horrible boyfriends and demanding your pity, when all this does is make you remember what you went through and that in your mind the story you’re being told right now, simply doesn’t compare.

Of course all bad experiences are horrible and everyone should have the right to let off some steam and should be able to share their story with people they trust. The danger lies in comparing and making it into some kind of competition. Like I said, it is tempting and I’m surely guilty of this, even though I am aware that this approach cannot be healthy.

But I believe that some things are simply more talked about and therefore more on our societies’ radar, like domestic violence and racism. And if you don’t belong to a group that is obviously ostracised, it can feel like your pain and what you went through doesn’t matter as much. If you didn’t live through domestic violence and you are not a female, but instead you are a white man who was molested as a child and has trouble coping with that in adulthood, – people may not be as sympathetic or downright won’t not believe you.

But just because others don’t take your experience seriously, doesn’t mean your experience doesn’t matter and that you don’t deserve to heal.

There are many reasons why some survivors may feel less recognised than others. One could be that you live in an environment where what you went through is simply not seen as abuse but as ‘normal’ behaviour. In some families, corporations and other social groups, the degrading of others and manipulating behaviour is actually encouraged.

Therefore,It can be hard to stay true to yourself and remember what you know to be your truth, even if there are few to none to validate you. Sometimes the opinion of a hundred stands against the opinion of one, while it is still possible that the individual standing alone, is actually right.

The hive mind can be powerful and t can make it very hard for you to stand your ground. People easily persuade each other. They can make each other believe that something does exist or sometimes that it doesn’t. It must not deter you from what you know. about what happened to you.

Never let anyone diminish your experience. If you feel like something that happened to you was atrocious, chances are it was.And even if it looks like, others had it way worse, that doesn’t take away from the fact that what happened to you was wrong.

No form of abuse is better than the other and all of it leaves survivors at the very least with emotional scars. and often with visible ones.

This is not about being unforgiving, but remembering your own truth and validate your feelings can actually help you in overcoming these things. Never give that up – you deserve to be heard, to be taken seriously and you deserve to heal.

Happy to be a Part of Your Problem

Survivors on a Mission

Many people seem to see social media as some kind of curse and granted there are a bunch of negative side-effects to being able to share your entire life online. like online bullying.

But, on the other had, the voice that social media and the internet as a whole, have given to abuse survivors is truly beneficial. A voice has been given to people, who didn’t really have one before. Whether it is a whistle-blower, a creative person who finally gets to promote their art, or an abuse survivor.

Finding your voice is important in any case, but for abuse survivors it is also an essential part of the healing journey. And if you’re not comfortable telling your story to others, it may be enough to tell it to yourself. Very often the trauma, we survived stays stuck inside of us, quietly wreaking havoc. Others might not understand what we’re going through and surviving abuse can be very lonely at times. So, while we need to be careful whom we share our stories with, there is a sense of relief in doing so and an opportunity to find others, who have been through something similar. Finding your own tribe, a family, whatever you wanna call it – it is essential.

Another big plus of sharing your insights – raising awareness! People have started to tell their stories, be it on social media, platforms like YouTube, they’ve written books, blogs, they have podcasts etc.

But the point is that survivors of abuse now DO share their stories, whether they have a professional background, as in the field of psychology or not. And that is great!

Abuse has been going on for eons and all over our beautiful planet. But never before, has there been a time when information about it was so widespread. We can now just google terms, like ‘gaslighting’ or ‘dog-whistling’ and educate ourselves. And that goes for everyone – people, who may have no idea how serious these things are, people who are being abused and survivors. Everyone gets a fair chance to find out the truth of what’s out there. But all of this has another huge advantage. It makes the life of abusive people harder.

Awareness is everything. And when victims of abuse start to actually understand what mechanisms lie behind the atrocities they had to endure, it’ll get harder and harder for abusers to have their way.

People who are aware, that they are being gaslighted are much harder to be gaslighted. When you eventually learn that other victims of domestic violence found a safe place and were able to escape, you might be empowered to ditch your own unhealthy relationship. When someone with a lack of self-love becomes aware, that this is a direct result of childhood abuse and realises that the person, who molested them as a child is the same individual who made them feel so unworthy in the first place – the cycle can be broken.

Abusers are manipulators. Often the manipulation of their victims, is enough abuse in itself. But their entire gig depends heavily on being able to influence their victims, especially if the abuse is ongoing. At the very least they need to make you believe that this is OK, meaning that it is not actually abuse and if you think that, you are the crazy one. Or they make you think that you are the problem and this is happening to you because you deserve it. Because you are inherently bad. But in some way, shape or form, they need to have some sway over you, to keep you in line.

So, when the victim starts to educate themselves about the mechanisms abusers employ, this narrative becomes much harder to maintain or may even be completely destroyed. Speaking out and dragging these abusive mechanisms into the open, makes it harder for abusers to follow through on their plans and, I truly believe, that it may even help prevent some things from happening.

And while I fully understand that me and my blog are just tiny little fish in the vast ocean of the internet, I have to admit that I actually feel honoured to be a tiny little part of this problem for abusive individuals. I am not a therapist, psychiatrist or in any way formally educated, when it comes to these matters. All I have are my personal experiences. But still, I do believe that every voice that may provide even a little bit of insight, can be helpful.

So, please find your voice if you can. Every story counts. Every story helps.

This is a valuable source with some tips when it comes to the safety of kids: https://www.siebenpolklaw.com/child-safety-tips/

Nightmares

Pondering how surviving abuse might have affected my dream state…

Since I was a child, I have had nightmares on a regular basis. I never thought too much about it, because I’ve always been an avid dreamer, who also remembers her dreams very well. I guess, I just always assumed that nightmares were a normal part of everyone’s life and I am sure to a certain extend they are.

Over the days leading up to and on Halloween my nightmare rate increased and I was reminded of my lifelong history with them. Ever since I was a little child, like four or five years old, I’ve been dreaming about very violent things. ..Like dead bodies and dead bodies bing burned in my presence to cover the tracks of the murderer.

Like I said this had become a normality in my life, I guess I always thought that everyone had gory nightmares like that. Now I am aware that it is not actually everyone, although this may be hard to tell, as I have also noticed that a lot of people feel uncomfortable talking about their dreams in general. I can absolutely relate to that, too. Dreams are very personal, often weird and intimate. Our society doesn’t necessarily encourage us to share those aspects of our existence and experience.

But there are also other people, who remember their dreams well and who occasionally share them, maybe because they were weird in a funny and entertaining way, or maybe they would share them with a therapist in an effort to get to the bottom of their trauma.

But what I am only becoming fully aware of recently, is that it might not be ‘normal’ for a five year old to dream about dead bodies being buried and hidden. It is the proverbial skeleton in the closet, which you probably shouldn’t even have too many of, at that age.

Since I now know that I had been sexually abused at that age already, I can’t help but think that this gruesome dream image might relate to a popular line that pedophiles like to tell the children, they abuse: “This will be our little secret.” The secret that needs to stay hidden…buried.

It is an awful memory, accompanied by the memory of these gory dreams and I have to admit that writing this makes me feel particularly vulnerable and I sometimes wonder, if it is the right thing to do, putting myself out there like this.

But I also know, that children are out there right now, being molested and that it may be an extremely uncomfortable topic, but that we need to talk about these things going on in our world and what they do to people in the long run, anyway. Not addressing it at all, simply won’t help.

I chose to share this quite extreme nightmare, because I’ve come to believe that everyone, who has been abused in some way, shape or form – and I know, they are all horrible, no matter what it was in each individual case – might experience nightmares, accordingly. Whether they remember them or not.

They are scary, no doubt, and sometimes they’d make us feel weird and very uncomfortable with ourselves, but I also strongly believe now, that they are an essential part of recovery. A way of our subconscious mind to deal with what happened to us and maybe even the starting point of our healing journey.

Naturally, I looked up some interpretations of my particular nightmare and the bottom line seems to be that it is about mental discomfort and trying to hide or shy away from a certain part of ourselves. In a way that is almost poetic to me. As horrible as the experience was and as much as I had to suppress these memories for my mental wellbeing at a very young age, it was also important for them to come up in this way, for me to be able to address them later on. it is all about being able to heal.

Naturally, I looked up some common interpretations of a dream like mine and it usually seems to relate to an attempt to mentally disconnect to a certain part of ourselves and trying not to face it or deal with it.

Thinking about this, made me realise just how much my very young self couldn’t possibly deal with the experience in her conscious mind and it brought up some other examples of nightmares, that might stem from being abused.

Someone might relive the day their narcissistic ex left them, in a dream, over and over again. Someone in high school, might dream a couple of times each week about the bully, they face on a daily basis in school.

Someone might dream about a parent, who they officially have a good relationship with, being extremely violent in their dreams.

None of these dreams are particularly pleasant, but I also noticed that they occur less and less with time, when you face what you went through. May it be through therapy, talking to others about it or simply have a good, relieving cry. Those dreams showing up less and less in my experience -I take that as a sign that my healing keeps progressing and that no matter, what we went through, healing is possible.

So, I wanted to share this with you to let you know, that you have the power to survive whatever you had to go through.

We can do this, we will support each other and keep on fighting for our happiness.

The Challenge of Forgiving your Abuser

Could you ever forgive your abuser? Or maybe you already have?

If you are a survivor of any kind of abuse, you may find it hard to forgive the person or the people who have done this to you. And you might think, why forgive them at all??! They have done horrible things! Yes, they did do those things and to question the ‘why’ when it comes to forgiveness is fair.

It took me a veeery long time to understand a popular and valid take on forgiveness: you are not doing it for them and you are not giving them an absolution. You do this for yourself to be able to let go of the attachment to the abuser, the situation and eventually the pain it has caused you, to be in a position to move on. And yes, I learned the hard way that ‘holding a grudge’ is not helpful, when you try to get some kind of inner peace.

But I also found myself investigating, why it is actually so hard to forgive people that have abused you in some shape or form. Some people might argue that it depends on the severity of the abuse. For example, some people seem to think that being neglected emotionally by your parents as child is ‘not as bad’ as if they had physically abused you. While I do not necessarily agree with this point of view, I can acknowledge, how the severity snd continuation of the abuse may affect this – but then again, the level of what we can possibly endure is different for everyone.

Other than on this platform, I rarely open up about the details of my abuse. However, when I do, I am often being told to just forgive my abusers already and it leaves me feeling defensive, but not really knowing hoot respond.

Mostly, to be honest, I think how lucky they are to be in a position where you wouldn’t know, how it feels when unspeakable things have happened to you and you’re not faced with this forgiveness- challenge. But they are not wrong about this one aspect: it would make my life-experience a lot lighter to be able to fully forgive.

So, the abuse itself and the horrors that came with it, can make the forgive-y approach tough at times. But I was wondering about another aspect of is….

A personality (or character) disorder is not the same as a mental illness. Because, unlike a mentally challenged person, who might indeed not be aware of what they are doing,. Our abusers did know, what thy were doing!

And proof for this is to me: the behind closed doors – approach, their persistent grooming and gaslighting to make their victims and others think that nothing bad ever happened and their, often so well woven, net of lies. They clearly and very deliberately try to hide their actions.

If you feel like, you need to hide and deny your actions – you clearly understand that what you are doing is not socially accepted and that there might even be repercussions, like imprisonment, if things came to light.

So, this is not a behaviour driven by insanity, they are making a deliberate choice and that choice is to hurt others. Of course, I’m not really telling you anything new – all abuse survivors have to come to grips with this harsh truth many times along their healing journey. I just feel, that it might be something to keep in mind when it comes to the topic of forgiveness. Especially in those moments when others are blaming us for not being able to say in good conscience:”I forgave them.”

This doesn’t mean that it is not possible to forgive, but it means that we have to be gentle to ourselves, when we feel that we are unable to meet those outside demands for being the bigger person –

We are the bigger person, because we survived what was done to us.

It means to acknowledge that they had a reason to make that choice – no matter if we can understand it or not – but, this reason had in fact nothing to do with us and had to do everything with them.

Hopefully, this can enable us to let it go, not by forgetting or condoning their actions, but by taking excellent care of ourselves and move on with our lives and live out maybe long-lost dreams, we had before the abuse.

Never forget that you are a true champion for surviving whatever kind of abuse you had to go trough and that you’re not alone in this. There is no shame in not being able to forgive them so quickly, or even fully. Like everything else along this healing journey, it is a gradual and slow process.

You can do it , if you want to. And if you do, it won’t be for them, but for yourself.

Surviving Childhood Abuse

It is never too late to be what you might have been.
George Eliot

Sadly, child abuse comes in many different forms. You may have been abused physically, sexually, psychologically, emotionally or you might have been neglected or all of the above. In any case, this will mean that you neither had the childhood you deserve nor the adult life you deserve.

It means that you never really got to be carefree and children (and actually, I feel grown-ups at least from time to time, too) should get the chance to be carefree. Life will ultimately put enough harsh experiences, lessons and responsibilities on you.

But more than this, when you are a child who faces the atrocities of abuse, your mind and soul will be completely overwhelmed with the experience and it takes a lot to make some sort of sense of it or even to suppress it. Energy, a child should be able to invest in getting to know the world.

More often than not, the abuser is someone you know, a family member, friend of the family, teacher or member of a friend’s family. As children we are prone to trust the ones close to us, trust the grown-ups, trust the ones in charge, otherwise this world just wouldn’t make sense. Why would the ones with all the responsibility do wrong? They surely wouldn’t have this kind of power, if they were bad? This betrayal of the natural trust of children makes child abuse in itself so sinister. Often the abuser was someone, we felt love for and whom we trusted.

Surviving childhood abuse often means, that we only fully realise the atrocities we’ve faced many years after it happened and by then, we are often already burdened with our own adult lives and responsibilities. I say “burdened”, because once you’ve become aware many of us require time and space to heal. But having a family of your own, school to attend, a job and other every day chores, can make it hard to take this much needed time for ourselves.

We were given a false image of the world and, more importantly, a false image of what love looks like. To us showing love means letting somebody do to us, whatever they please, without hearing us complaining about it.

But those internal and sometimes also external scars, will ultimately have an impact on our adult life. We might attract love relationship, friendships and work situations that mimic our abusive past without even knowing it. We suffer from Complex PTSD , we have not followed our hearts and dreams, haven’t fulfilled our full potential, we’ve never really gotten to know ourselves or developed a healthy self-esteem. Sometimes this might even manifest itself in a death-wish.

Because we have a tendency to suppress these gruesome childhood memories or talk it down, they hit even harder when they bubble up. I know it is very hard to acknowledge that someone you loved and trusted would do this to you. It is also a popular believe that abuse is only abuse if it is physical. Not true. Just look at your emotional scars. There is no shame in acknowledging that something unspeakable happened to you, when you were young. The shame belongs to the abuser and whether you’re still in contact with them or not, whether you are able to forgive them or not – you absolutely have a right to reclaim your life.

If you deal with this, it will hurt but it will also benefit the ones closest and dear to you, like your own children. You will get to know yourself and be able to fulfil those suppressed dreams. There is always a way. Reclaim your lost childhood, too. It’s never too late for some childlike fun and to take back your joy. Find things you enjoy, silly things, a new hobby maybe, a new passion.

I know it is not easy, but the more you’ll try, the easier it’ll get and you will experience more and more joy, trust a little more, be a little more adventurous, curious and your life will change.

Never stop visualising a better future and never lose hope. This may sound impossible but it is not. You deserve to be happy and it wasn’t fair that someone took this part from you early in life, but it doesn’t mean that tomorrow can’t be great. Plus you will finally get to know the amazing being you are. You survived this – that means you are a superhero. You can do anything your heart desires.

Soul Expansion – the one thing they’ll never have

If you believe in the concept of a soul, you are probably also familiar with the concept of its journey.

Personally, I believe that our souls are on a journey of learning, development and exploration. Attributes we assign mostly to children, like curiosity, playfulness and joy in discovering new things should actually be a big part of everybody’s life at all times. But society (don’t even think, it is only modern society) has done a fine job to suppress this notion and replaced it with dogmas like ‘too grown up to dream’. When you are supposed to be adulting, but you’re a big dreamer, who is not done exploring the world yet, you might even get dirty looks and snide comments.

These comments may come from your abuser, because this is one of the things that separates them from others.

Every soul aims to expand, to go on adventures and discover the world around them. It is a part of life and NO, you’re never too old to jump into a new adventure and discover something new. Even abuse survivors, who often feel stifled or even even hindered by what has happened to them, will eventually develop the need to explore and expand again. It can take years and years to fight your way back to this point, but you will listen to that inner voice again that is guiding you to the adventures that bring back joy.

You might be prompted to travel, to change jobs, move, change your wardrobe, pick up a new hobby or study something you want to know more about. It can really be as simple as that or it can be the adventure of a lifetime, like quitting your job and travel the world or starting a new business from scratch or you could be guided by some kind of event into taking a whole new perspective on life which is an adventure on its own. Or it could be something completely different – your choice, your creativity, all yours really. This will probably be at a point, when you have already healed a little bit and it will assist you on your healing journey.

For abusive people, like narcissists and psychopaths, this doesn’t seem to be the case though. They do not seem to feel the need to expand and follow the voice of their soul.

I remember distinctly asking one of my family members what they wanted to be when they were a child. Their reaction was odd, to say the least. She froze and gave me one of those dirty looks, we survivors are so used to. She had nothing to say and my question created a very awkward moment of silence, which was almost unbearably long. It made me feel bad, like the co-dependant I am, but it was also evidence of how empty their lives really are, which even with all they do to us – it’s just so sad.

This was ages before I even realised that parts of my family are deeply toxic and that I had been abused. But, it made me notice that at least this person is very different to me. Today, I believe this can be one of the red flags, that might enable you to identify a character disorder. They do not get excited about anything, not truly – they just pretend, they do.

Abuse, no matter what kind, sucks the life-force out of the victim. Maybe it is because of this, that abusive people do not try to take good care of their own soul. They just take our energy.

I don’t even want to think about an existence like that. Yet, I find it fascinating. Abusive people don’t like to expand, because expansion almost always disrupts your daily routine. This is in direct conflict with their way of living, because when you aim to abuse, extort and hurt others, you really need this routine and you also need your victim to have one. Thus, they have no use for more freedom, as long as the system of abuse they put in place continues to work. No need for expansion.

If you suffer from PTSD after being abused, continue to listen to your gut, your intuition, your soul. Don’t give up – and eventually you will engage back into your personal growth, exploration and those soul adventures. You will surpass your abuser(s) and maybe, even after all you’ve been through, you might be bale to get some solace in the fact that they will never have that. Your possibilities, on the other hand, are unlimited.