#abuse survival psychology

[neuroticboyfriend]

Abuse has a goal behind it, and a lot of the time, it's about changing the victims behavior. If someone screams at you for not doing X activity, eventually you learn to do X activity. If someone hits you when you defy them, eventually you learn not to defy them. If someone abuses you frequently enough, and you begin to break down to their will... It is possible to reach a point where it may seem like you're not being abused anymore.

They don't yell anymore because you stay quiet and do what you're told. They don't threaten you anymore because you don't voice even the slightest disagreement or need. What used to be screaming fighting arguments have become lectures at your expense. They may even praise you for doing what they want you to. And all those mundane moments - breakfast, the rare kind act - stand out more. Your perception of the relationship skews even more. It's all normal now.

And it's still abuse. It's just reached its end goal - wearing you down so badly that they don't need to overtly abuse you anymore to get what they want. All they need to do is make a joke, or complain to guilt you, or tell you want to do/not to do, etc. etc. The fact that's all it takes now doesn't make what's happening to you less severe - if anything, it means you're in much, much more danger than you could realize.

It's abuse. It's horrific. It's just not obvious anymore... and that's terrifying. You deserve so, so much better. You deserve to truly be safe - not to have your wellbeing held behind fearful compliance. That's not safety. That's not love. That's abuse. It being psychological doesn't make it less dangerous.

[furiousgoldfish]

my parents: punishing and humiliating me under duress and torture for having any kind of reaction, for crying, for complaining, for getting angry, trying to fight back, breaking down or showing any kind of pain and fear

also my parents: increasingly annoyed when they can't easily get a reaction out of me and stooping to worse and more horrid provocations and violence to still be able to get a reaction

[cluster-b-culture-is]

Cluster b (npd? Aspd?) Culture is constantly pushing down the need for affection 'cause you can't allow yourself to be human. Never again

.

[churchstopsurgeryscars]

Give me more Locus learning how to be human again please and thank you. Let that man relearn about stuff like music and good food and bad memes on the internet. I wanna watch him pick up a hobby like painting or writing. I want him to learn who he is when the armor is off. He deserves to learn how to smile and laugh again and get used to the feeling of joy fluttering in his chest.

[spoonie-on-wheels86]

[marcsalmonds]

I totally get that the majority of men are shitty and I've certainly had my experiences with them but seeing jokey posts about how it's Praxis to be mean to your boyfriend after I've just come out of an emotionally toxic relationship with a woman is like OOF

[t0rschlusspan1k]

The poor thing peed on my bed and when I told my mother she started screaming at me because according to her I was lying. I have no idea why anyone would ever say that. She 'punished' me by saying I'll have to bring it to the laundromat myself as if I had done anything on purpose, as if I had a car or... I don't know. I'm tired of trying to explain her obsession for blaming me. I wanted to bang my head against the wall and I started panting. Then she commented because I hadn't washed the dishes after they had left me all day to watch over the cat. My period was so painful I was about to throw up and I was literally bent over the sink. And she knows I'm in hell every time and she doesn't care. She barely let me rest yesterday. At that point I started sobbing because she just won't leave me alone. She's always complaining about something. And I can't get away from here. My father heard me bawling my eyes out for that and for the pain and blatantly ignored me. I'm alone.

When I went back to my room I overhead her talking to a friend on the phone telling her the things I had suggested her about going to the veterinarian as if she was the one who came up with that much common sense, while she's totally incapable of a rational thought. She doesn't even understand when I talk clearly and with a simple language (she does, she just wants to antagonise me) and she had a tantrum twice because I was just trying to explain something that had happened. Now it's because I told her she never said she meant to "keep the cat inside the bathroom for the entire night because he was peeing everywhere", she just put him there and casually told me he peed on the sofa. She didn't tell me anything else. But I'm the one who makes things up and now she's even more angry at me.

And I have no one to talk to. I won't be able to see my psychologist and my psychiatrist. I can't talk to my siblings because they make me feel worse. I can't talk to my remaining Internet friends because they reply the day or the week after. I have no one and I can't leave. I want to d*e. Why didn't I d*e that day. It's her fault I'm like this. I want her out of my life. I want to take as many of our cats as possible and leave.

And I'm writing all this and I've been screaming forever and nobody cares.

[orangegloom]

dog has aspd and did but i fear ill sound like one of those "my character has an evil psychopath alter" people if i bring it up 😭

[gaybaseball-fan]

“Take a look at the wrong man beating up the wrong guy. Oh man look at those cave men go. It’s the best selling show”

[neuroticboyfriend]

okay. i finally found something on parents love bombing that is not ableist against cluster B's or encouraging parents to love bomb. it's in the form of a comment on this reddit post from 6 years ago. here's the comment, from u/Glaucus92:

Lovebombing is part of the cycle of abuse. The cycle you'll usually find is this one:

Calm -> Tension building -> Incident -> Reconcilliation -> Calm

Lovebombing is part of the "Reconcilliation" part. After an incident, a victim will usually try to confront, give consequences to, or withdraw form the abuser. In order to keep the victim close, to keep power over them, an abuser may lovebomb their victim. It is not linked to a specifc role in an abisive dynamic. It is a technique used by abuser as a reaction to 'losing' a victim.

The abuser will (attempt to) be the person you always wanted them to be. That can be the parent that listens to you when you talk about your interest. It can be that they tell you how proud they are of you, how they've always been proud, etc. It can be that they buy you gifts or give you money. This behaviour isn't exclusive to abusive parents either; think of how an abusive spouse might organize a wonderful date or get an expensive gift for their victims.

The goal of the lovebombing is to give you a little taste of what you usually never get from them, be it attention, financial aid, praise, compliments, whatever. By giving you that tiny bit, they are basically pretending that they can be this nice, loving parent. The underlying unspoken message of course being that things could be like this, if only you tried harder, or weren't like x, or were more like y. Because without the realization that they are abusive, it doesn't make sense for them to purposefully hurt you and then be really nice to you.

Lovebombing insipres false hope that if only you could be better, the abuser wouldn't be abusive. It also helps wiht the gaslighting; when they do all these nice things for you in that moment, you might think that you over-exagerated the previous abuse. It's usually only when you look back and realise that all these 'nice' things only happened when you were upset with them or withdrew from them.

Since you asked for examples:

A parent who is usually very disinterested in your life suddenly makes a lot of effort to discuss you hobbies with you.

A parent might start to give you a lot of compliments all of a sudden, or tell stories about how they've told others about how amazing you are.

Parents might give you gifts for no reason. Stating that they just wanted to be nice, or just thought of you when they saw it.

They might start calling or visiting a lot, especially when they previously didn't. Saying things about how much they miss you.

Trying to harken back to 'the good old days'. Sending you pictures of happy childhood memories or recounting old stories.

It might be straight up bribery. A conflict happens, and after the intial blow up you are given cash/money to buy something nice or becasue they ust want to help.

A parent might try to smooth things over by taking you to a place or on a trip you wanted to go to.

I know some of these might sound like perfectly normal things, and they would be coming from non-abusive people. It becomes an abusive tactic when it happens more often than not (or in greater intesity) after a conflict has occured. It also almost always happens in lieu of an actual apology. By lovebombing instead of apologizing, the abuser doesn't have to take responisbility for their action. The unspoken agreement that governs this is that by accepting the gift/loveboming, the victim doesn't hold the abuser accountable.

[furiousgoldfish]

Asking for help when you're being abused, doesn't come naturally. It, in fact, feels counter-productive, dangerous, wrong, bad, shameful, mortifying, scary, burdensome (for the person you're asking), and sometimes the abused person can feel like they would rather keep to themselves forever, than reach out and say what is going on.

This is not accidental; abusers make it so on purpose. They spend a lot of effort convincing you that you're a burden on the entire world, that you're attention hungry and making things up to stir up drama, that you lie and remember things wrong, that you should be ashamed of what was done to you and how you made the abuser do it. Even if not spoken out loud, it is very clear that if you said anything to anyone, you would be punished, shamed, and put trough even worse abuse than what you're experiencing right now. That things would turn around to make you seem like you're the worse one in the situation and everyone would side with the abuser.

So reaching out for help, after a certain point, feels useless. Like you'd be only inconveniencing people around you, showing them how incapable you are, how helpless and pathetic and ashamed you feel, and nobody would be able to help you anyway. Abusers make it seem like they're above law and authority, the idea that just another person could do anything to stop them feels ridiculous. And there's a possibility outsiders will side with the abuser, making the situation infinitely worse for you, because they will tell the abuser and get you into worse trouble.

Not asking for help, and instead just surviving or maybe independently trying to get away, is not a sign of a fault, or a person not trying hard enough and not wanting help. It means the situation is so bad that involving another person might mean extra danger, and doesn't lead to resolving the situation.

When you think about it, what does your average person do to help someone in abuse? There's no easy steps to secure somebody's safety. A person might report it, which might end up just pissing the abuser off. The victim often has no other place to go, so now they're threatened with homelessness. Someone offering you a place to stay might work short-term, while also being dangerous, but victims need more than short-term solutions. They need permanent, foolproof and secure life plan to stay away from the abuser. They need resources that help them access safe places to indefinitely stay in, they need consistent income, and a community to keep them safe. This is not something that anyone can just offer, and even programs that offer some of this help, are temporary.

Sometimes we don't ask for help because we can tell that help is impossible, and sometimes, we're conditioned not to, we have gone trough torture for just thinking of telling someone what's going on. We still want the abuse to stop. We still need to get away. We're still doing our best to survive and escape, while also trying to not inconvenience anyone around us.

[spoonie-on-wheels86]

[biblicallyangry]

You tell me I act insane, again, for even the littlest of things and I want to say, in a voice like the Furies: if I am acting insane, it’s because you are driving me insane. You are the one who gave me a life and then chose to break it in two, before my black eyes, again and again and again. If I seem like I don’t know what to expect from life, that would be because you never gave me any information I could trust. If I seem lost, it’s because you didn’t do your job to build me a world worth trusting. If I am acting angry, it’s because I am. I am so, so fucking angry. And I would be - and I am entirely in the right for it.

[darnold75]

The Pain That Never Ends

[vizthedatum]

Any diagnosis (self or not) is implying that the person suffering from the condition is aware that they’re suffering from it.

(I do not have anything against those diagnosed with NPD unless they cross my personal boundaries (as with everyone else).) Narcissism is not a diagnosis.

If they are not aware *and* you are being abused by specific PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOR, then please know that they absolutely think they’re right in whatever emotional/psychological/physical abuse they’re doing. They're abusing you.

Calling people out on their behavior and talking about your personal experience WHILE using terms such as “narcissistic abuse” is life-saving. And, furthermore, calling out the behavior helps those inflicting harm to understand that they need help. That this is a problem. It gives us credibility because not only do survivors co-validate each other, it helps us be seen as a credible group (which is even more important when you realize how much our credibility has been put into question by those who abused us!).

Literally, for lack of a better term, this is how survivors survive: we learn what happened to us... and then we figure out how to heal, and part of that is co-validation with other survivors. Because what happened is real. Please see this resource:

Of course, this is a matter of debate. Block and do not engage if you do not agree.

[noxthesleepymoodyoverthinker]

Cinderella is not the story of a naive girl who “let” her step-family push her around and then went and married a man after one dance and get “saved”. It is the story of an orphaned, grief-stricken child who, immediately after losing her father, was manipulated and used by her stepmother, and abused by the only family she had left. 

Despite that, she became self-sufficient, made herself useful to her step-family so they didn’t throw her out of the only home she’d ever known, and yet, didn’t let the constant bullying take away her hope or make her bitter and resentful.

She just wanted to go to a ball like a normal girl of her station. She just wanted to dress up pretty and go to a party. She wasn’t looking for a prince, she just wanted one night of fun where she could have it.

The fact that she married the prince and escaped her family was the happy ending, but it wasn’t the only point of the story. Besides, if marriage is not what defines a woman, why should her marrying the prince define or pull down her strength?

Cinderella is far from a poor role model. (None of the Disney princesses are poor role models or weak characters, IMHO.) But Cinderella especially so.

Ask anyone who can actually relate to Cinderella -- someone who lived while experiencing any kind of abuse or neglect but could not leave -- and none of them would see her as a weak character or role model.