#/ abuse

[support]

Everything ok?

If you or someone you know is a victim of abuse, please contact:

The National Domestic Violence Hotline or 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)

Rape Abuse & Incest National Network or 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)

Trained advocates are available 24/7 to take your call.

For international resources, please try IASP.

For more resources, please visit our Counseling & Prevention Resources page for a list of services that may be able to help.

[jadethetransfem]

Oh… I see now

“Why do you beat yourself up so much over little mistakes?”

[traumasurvivors]

Your trauma is valid if it came from abusive education methods. You never deserved abuse, no matter what the intentions were. You deserved so much better.

[ingravinoveritas]

(CW: Abuse) The fact that people have such narrow, prescribed ideas about what abuse is and what kinds of people can or cannot be abused is the reason why abuse of all different topographies (verbal, physical, emotional, sexual, etc.) is not believed, not taken seriously, and not reported. There is no one gender, one age group, one socioeconomic bracket that abuse belongs to--it can and does exist anywhere, and acting like this is not the case and pretending that it "can't happen" to someone only causes more harm to victims everywhere.

To all of my followers, please know that I am holding space for you. I am not here to judge, to gatekeep, or to tell anyone what to think. It is okay to feel the way you feel, and I want you to know you are not alone.

[blissfulrain12]

The Dead Pixel Conversation

So I've seen a lot of interpretations of the Dead Pixel that are really good but I haven't seen my interpretation yet so I thought I'd share. When I saw the scene I thought it was about how Anya and Curly saw/carried their own abuse.

Anya can't stop thinking about hers. It hasn't ruined everything for her, she won't let it, but she can't escape it all the same. It's always in the back of her mind.

Curly can't face his. He can't see it. He feels he'll go crazy if he tries. So he doesn't. He turns away and changes the subject.

[purplecatghostposts]

I think one of the many reasons of why I love the episode Emotion so much is because with added context of Félix’s backstory, he’s doing exactly what he would’ve wanted someone to do for him.

Félix learned his father was abusive and controlling very early on due to his actions and never actually hiding it from him, unlike Adrien with Gabriel or Kagami with Tomoe, who are still struggling with their parents controlling their lives in a very literal sense. Kagami and Adrien might get frustrated and/or rebel against their parents at certain points, but at this point in the story, neither have quite gotten to the point where they realize that their parents are outright abusive due to emotional manipulation, so when Félix gets rid of their parents, they’re both very distressed and angry with him.

Félix however? Félix had probably wanted his father gone for a long time. There’s a good chance he often wished someone could get rid of him for him, as his ring barred him from doing it himself, or that his father would simply disappear forever. So even if that ship has long since sailed given his father is dead now, Félix sees Adrien with his father and Kagami with her mother and immediately jumps to, “I always wished I could be free of my father, I should do the same for them, they probably want that too.”

Which. Doesn’t go over so well. Both still want to try to fix their relationship with their respective parent. Even if we see how badly that goes in Pretension, with Tomoe both literally and figuratively trying to strip Kagami of her freedom, that choice is ultimately up to them.

If the situation were reversed however? If Félix was the one still stuck with his father and someone snapped his father and 99% of the world away just so they could be together and safe and happy, there’s a good chance he’s seeing this as a dream come true, or at the very least, is extremely touched by the gesture.

(Anyways happy birthday to my favorite episode in the show)

[aita-blorbos]

AITA for getting revenge on my abusers?

For context, me and my sister are conjoined twins. (I'd be medically classified as a parasitic twin, to be specific. We share a brain and I'm just a face on the back of her head) Our mother didn't want us, and instead of giving us to an orphanage, she donated us to science. We spent our first several years in a lab, enduring intense experimentation. During this time, the way we were treated was vastly different. She was just a poor kid cursed with an affliction, while I was a monster. A mistake, a cancer. They poked and prodded at us, treated us like guinea pigs, put us through all sorts of tests, to figure out what was "wrong" with me and how to control me. They never ONCE asked me how I felt or what I wanted. I fought back of course, because the shit they were doing HURT and I was SCARED. I'll admit that I caused a lot of damage, people got hurt, but they had it coming. Who does that to a kid? Eventually they decided that trying to control me was too much work, and it was time to get rid of me. They couldn't fully remove me, since me and my sis are attached at the brain and all, but they removed as much as they safely could and pushed the rest into her skull & sealed it up. Soon after that the problem was deemed as fixed, and she was adopted out into a new family. I was mostly dormant, only able to talk to her in her head but unable to act. Years passed and eventually she forgot about me, fully integrating into her new, happy family I was inactive until our adulthood, early 20s. I was awoken when she took a blow to the head, and immediately I decided to get to work. When she slept, I would track down the doctors and scientists from our childhood and kill them one by one. Was it brutal? Yes. Gruesome? Of course. I don't regret a thing, though, they got what they fucking deserved Though, because nobody knows about me and we share a body, now the police are trying to blame my sister for the murders. (And because of the shared brain, she has a few memories of the murders and might be a little traumatized, or something) That was never my intention. I was doing this for her as much as it was for me, those people hurt her back then too. But she's super upset and freaked out, so idk. Did I maybe go too far? Was there some other way?

[thestarlightforge]

“when safety is gone, what grows in the space it left behind”

There are a lot of abuse and recovery stories out there in fandom.  A lot of them are written by people who’ve never been in an abusive relationship.  That’s fine, that certainly doesn’t mean you can't write it, especially when it’s present in canon.  Unfortunately, it does mean that a lot of people get it wrong.

The usual abuse narrative you see in fandom is a story about absence.  The lack of safety.  The lack of freedom.  The lack of love, or of hope, or of trust.  They try to characterize the life of an abused kid, or an abused partner, based on what’s missing.  They characterize recovery based on getting things back: finding safety, discovering freedom, and slowly regaining the ability to trust–other people, the security of the world, themselves.

That doesn’t work.  That is not how it works.

Lives cannot be characterized by negative space.  This is a statement about writing.  It’s also a statement about life.

You can’t write about somebody by describing what isn’t there.  Or you can, but you’ll get a strange, inverted, abstracted picture of a life, with none of the right detail.  A silhouette.  The gaps are real but they're not the point.

If you’re writing a story, you need to make it about the things that are there.  Don’t try to tell me about the absence of safety.  Safety is relative.  There are moments of more or less safety all throughout your character’s day.  Absolute safety doesn’t exist in anyone’s life, abusive situation or not.

If you are trying to tell me a story about not feeling safe, then the question you need to be thinking about is, when safety is gone, what grows in the space it left behind?

Don’t try to tell me a story about a life characterized by the lack of safety.  Tell me a story about a life defined by the presence of fear.

What's there in somebody’s life when their safety, their freedom, their hope and trust are all gone?  It’s not just gaps waiting to be filled when everything comes out right in the end.  It’s not just a void.

The absence of safety is the presence of fear.  The absence of freedom is the presence of rules, the constant litany of must do this and don’t do that and a very very complicated kind of math beneath every single decision.  The lack of love feels like self-loathing.  The lack of trust translates as learning skills and strategies and skepticism, how to get what you need because you can’t be sure it’ll be there otherwise.

You don’t draw the lack of hope by telling me how your character rarely dares to dream about having better.  You draw it by telling me all the ways your character is up to their neck in what it takes to survive this life, this now, by telling me all the plans they do have and never once in any of them mentioning the idea of getting out.

This is of major importance when it comes to aftermath stories, too.  Your character isn’t a hollow shell to be filled with trust and affection and security.  Your character is full.  They are brimming over with coping mechanisms and certainties about the world.  They are packed with strategies and quickfire risk-reward assessments, and depending on the person it may look more calculated or more instinctual, but it’s there.  It’s always there.  You’re not filling holes or teaching your teenage/adult character basic facts of life like they’re a child.  You’re taking a human being out of one culture and trying to immerse them in another. People who are abused make choices.  In a world where the ‘wrong’ choice means pain and injury, they make a damn career out of figuring out and trying to make the right choice, again and again and again.  People who are abused have a framework for the world, they are not utterly baffled by everyone else, they make assumptions and fit observations together in a way that corresponds with the world they know.

They’re not little lost children.  They’re not empty.  They’re human beings trying to live in a way that’s as natural for them as life is for anybody, and if you’re going to write abuse/recovery, you need to know that in your bones.

Don’t tell me about gaps.  Tell me about what’s there instead.

[oxytocinatrocities]

Yet another comic about leaving the Mormon church that can be applied to a variety of things. I also plan to include some version of this in a graphic novel I’m making.

[traumasurvivors]

i am a survivor of abusive education methods and people often invalidate my trauma because my abuser “just wanted to educate me”. One day i was madly searching “is my trauma valid?” And i found this blog. Thank you <3

I am so glad you found my blog. Your trauma is absolutely valid.

I just made this post for this specific circumstance. Thank you for sharing. <3 I try to cover as many circumstances as I can but it's helpful to hear from others.

[thepeacefulgarden]

And remember, they don't have to hit you in order to qualify as an abuser. Do they...

Say mean and/or creepy things and then try to walk it back as "just a joke?"

Tell you that you're "too sensitive" when you call out their words or behavior?

Use the Bible, the Quran, the Torah, the Vedas, or any other religious text to justify mistreating you?

Treat you badly, apologize, promise never to do it again, and proceed to do it again?

Try to control where you go, how you dress, who you see and talk to, what and how much you eat, etc.?

Snoop through your phone, emails, belongings, or other private stuff without your OK? Or manipulate you into "letting" them do so?

Track your menstrual cycle (if you have one) without your OK? Or manipulate you into "letting" them do so?

Try to make you keep a pregnancy you don't want (or terminate one you do)? Or try to dictate what (if any) birth control you use?

Threaten to hurt themselves or other people if you leave, or "step out of line?"

Break or throw things when they're upset?

Punch holes in walls, doors, etc.?

Make you (or try to make you) engage in sexual acts you don't enjoy, don't feel ready for, don't feel comfortable with, or just plain aren't in the mood for?

Try to make you feel like a bad person for saying "no" to sex?

Try to distance you from your friends and family?

Actively try to turn your friends and family against you? Or you against them?

Get mad when you say no or try to set a boundary?

Call you degrading names?

Use your insecurities against you?

"Neg" or "should" you into conforming to their preferences?

Try to get you to quit your job, or get you fired?

Use drugs, alcohol, a bad day at work, or whatever their deal is as an excuse for their behavior? If so, you need to get out. Now. Make a plan. I promise, it doesn't get better as long as you are in this relationship. You cannot love the red flags out of people. Even if they don't hit you now, there's a good chance they'll start sooner or later; abuse has a nasty tendency to escalate.

[serial-unaliver]

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.

[hopeless-bi-man]

As a younger sibling, I can see how this is both right and wrong.

My brother has done unforgivable things to me*, and yet I love him with my whole heart.

*he has physically beaten me on 3 separate occasions, and told me it was my fault.

He and I have been through hell and back with our dad. My dad's bipolar, and he hasn't managed his disorder in years. He got his own house only a month or so ago, and before that he was living in the basement of his parents house, where his brother would abuse him (Guess it runs in the family).

I know what it's like to have a loving sibling while going through a rough time. But my brother was having a rough time too. At some point, he started taking it out on me.

Regardless of anything that has happened or will happen between me and my brother, I love him.

Vi made a lot of mistakes. Jinx made a lot of mistakes. But they loved each other.

They didn't turn out as well as my brother and I, but there's something to be said for vi's dedication to jinx. There's something to be said for vi causing a lot of trauma for jinx, too.

Is vi a good older sister? She can be.

Has she significantly hurt jinx? Yup.

Do people learn? Yes, they do.

Regardless, they're here now, and there's nothing to be done but grow and stick by each other.

i do not want to hear SHIT about how "jinx is a better big sibling than vi and vi sucked." jinx is going to be a good older sister because she had a good older sister end of discussion

[uncanny-tranny]

Honestly, there is a certain type of fetishizing of violence that occurs when you are the victim of abuse - wherein people talk directly to you about how much they fantasize about your abuser/s dying and being killed - "all abusers must be killed!" they say.

As a victim of prolonged abuse, I never felt cared for when people indulged that information to me. It often feels like my abuse is being exploited for others to enact their own violent fantasies and secret desires - my abuse means nothing to them in the same way that I didn't matter to my abusers. It's not support - it's just another cycle of violence.

I'm begging people to care more about victims and survivors than they do about retribution of abusers. Nowhere along the way should your focus on the abuser outweigh the people affected by their abuse. If you truly want to support abuse victims and survivors, start with us

[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.

[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.