#abuse survivor

[gentleaffirmations]

I am here for the "bad" survivors.

I am here for people who don't perform perfectly as they recovered from their trauma and abuse.

I am here for people who weren't believed.

I am here for people who went back, who reached out, who were unsure about what was happening to them until they were.

I am here for people who behaved chaotically and uncharacteristically in reaction to their trauma.

I am here for people who screamed, yelled, or hit back.

I am here for people who froze, stayed silent, or couldn't fight back.

I am here for people who couldn't get their stories straight, because their own memories of what happened were so fractured by the trauma.

I am here for people who's boundaries became rigid and impermeable as they tried to create a new sense of safety in their life.

I am here for people who lost all boundaries, who felt unsafe setting any boundaries in the wake of having them violated.

Whatever happened that makes you feel like you were a "bad" survivor, I am here for you.

There are no "bad" survivors because there are no "good" survivors. Surviving is hard.

[spiritualseeker777]

I’ve always hated “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger” - it’s so much more complicated than that

[the-bar-sinister]

repeatedly sobbing "do what you want forever" as I desperately try to convince myself that it's okay to make small decisions about the short term direction of my life without concern for the opinions of other people.

[girl-in-the-thunderbolt-suit]

Baby reindeer was brutal, triggering, uncomfortable, honest and beautiful. One of the best portrayals of someone with sexual trauma I've ever seen on TV.

[lostmf]

[aintnopartylikeaprideparty]

as someone who has experienced abuse from someone with a personality disorder, it's actually incredibly easy to not dehumanize everyone with a personality disorder. i've seen people do borderline eugenic rhetoric surrounding people who have npd, aspd, bpd or other personality disorders, and then be like "I'M allowed to say these things because i'm a survivor, and if you disagree you are hurting abuse victims."

and frankly? i'm tired of it. as an abuse survivor i'm here to say that you're NOT allowed to turn into a fucking eugenicist the moment you're hurt by someone with a personality disorder.

does hurting and belittling other people who happen to have the same disorder as your abuser, people that are already suffering and that are already looked down on by society, bring you any healing? does it bring you peace?

Being hurt by someone isn't an excuse to hurt others that you feel justified in lashing out on. you're literally in control of your own actions,

you may claim to be making a safe space for abuse survivors, but i will never feel any solidarity with you, and i ESPECIALLY don't feel safe with you considering i might have a personality disorder.

you are excluding a large amount of abuse survivors in the name of "advocacy". a lot of people with personality disorders developed one or multiple due to heavy abuse. in the aim of creating a safe space, you are excluding the ones who need a safe space the most.

[sparrow-the-tired-lesbian]

here’s a friendly reminder for survivors of any sort of abuse that

It wasnt your fault

You are strong

You didnt ask for it

No one gets to invalidate your experience

If someone invalidates your experience, you get to dump their ass

[paraily2]

I always felt alienated as someone who has childhood sexual trauma but wasn’t hurt by a pedophile. I didn’t know where I fit.

Was I hurt by an adult? Yes. 

But they didn’t do it out of lust or attraction. I felt the need to justify my trauma by somehow convincing myself that maybe they were attracted to me–even though they weren’t.

Quite frankly, I didn’t believe I had sexual trauma until I was able to truly comprehend that MAPs and child molesters are two very different things. I clung onto the idea so much of the “inherently evil pedophile who sought out to get me” because it felt like the only way to validate my trauma.

I realize that is no longer the case, and understanding that my abuser(s) weren’t MAPs has been healing for me. I’ve been able to look at my trauma objectively rather than making it easily digestible for myself and others.

I know there are so many others like me—those who also suppress their childhood sexual trauma because their abuser doesn’t fit the “scary pedophile who likes kids” mold.

I see you all. Your sexual trauma deserves to be acknowledged.

Learning that most sexual abuse doesn’t stem from attraction but instead power is a valuable thing for everyone to learn. And I can only hope that knowledge becomes more widespread.

[futuretherapoo]

Its insane how certain behaviours and actions of a parent absolutely fucks up a child to the point where they won't be able to properly function as an adult.

[tklshtxler]

[ontheoutside-lookingin]

“She’s so sweet she’s always going out of her way to help others” quick someone give that girl all the love and safe space she deserves before being “sweet” (pathological people pleasing as a trauma response) destroys her and leaves behind a bitter empty shell of a person

[nothing0fnothing]

A lot of people don't understand that likeability is a massive decider in how we acsess the world, and how that disproportionately affects survivors of childhood abuse.

If we're likeable we get perks. We might get upgraded on our flight. We could get a little freebie here and there. Humans are social creatures. People like us, and in turn want to do nice things in hopes we will like them back. That's super cool. Win for humanity. Nice people deserve nice things. Everyone deserves a free latte or a slightly nicer hotel room as a treat.

But we don't just deal with this kind of social exchange for flights and lattes. Buying a car is a social interaction. Job interviews are social interactions. Doctors appointments are social interactions. Stop and searches or traffic stops are social interactions. If you're likeable, you will probably get a car for a fair price or a job you're qualified for. You will find it easier to get your doctor to listen to you or you might be able to charm your way out of a ticket. If you're not likeable, those things become harder for you.

So.. what? Karma. Good vibes. What goes around comes around. Be nice to people and they'll be nice to you, duh.

But likeability has very little to do with being nice. For most people, being likeable isn't in their control. If you're ugly or fat, if you're not white, if you're lower class, if you're disabled or neurodivergent, suddenly whether you're liked or not has very little to do with how you treat other people, it's about how they perceive you. It's painful when you just want people to like you, it's dangerous when you need them to.

This is why abusers attack their victims likeability.

Gaslighting. Smear campaigning. Public shaming. Isolating the victim till all their friends and family wonder why she suddenly thinks she's too good for them. It all puts a victim in a place where they fear they won't be believed not because they're not credible, but because they're no longer likeable. They're both social currencies, but when you need help and support, likeability always spends better.

Remember Depp v Heard? What was all that revenge porn and outright lying all about? It was about making Amber Heard; the young and beautiful, self educated multilingual, long time human rights champion and loving mother, unlikeable. It was all utter bullshit, but it worked. People were making memes out of her rape testimony. They swarmed her with hate outside the courthouse. They followed her home and posted feces through her letter box. His attorney joked publicly about all the ways she intentionally triggered Amber's PTSD moments before she was to face the world in the most public domestic abuse trial in history, and the public laughed with her. Depp, with the help of his high profile colleagues and incredibly expensive spin doc- I mean lawyers, made Amber unlikeable, and when people decided she was unlikeable they decided she must also be uncredible.

Abusive parents also have the power to make their victims unlikeable. They do this by consistently traumatising them into socially disparaged behaviour, while projecting to the world a picture of the perfect family dealing with a "problem child".

We have a picture in our heads of battered children as withdrawn, quiet little angels, sadly suffering in silence just waiting for someone to notice the pain in their eyes and save them. In real life, this is rarely the case. Most children who have experienced early life abuse are reactive and disruptive. They are defensive and quick to anger. They are loud or sarcastic and they don't respect authority. In short, they are mirrors of the environment that they deal with at home. Due to this, behavioural interventions outside of the home does very little to help, the root of the issue isn't being fixed. So they get reputations as difficult little shits.

These kids go out and interact with the world like the hurt and traumatised people that they are, and the people that are supposed to be their safety net by reporting any suspicions of abuse to CPS, simply don't. Why? Because we find the child less likable than their parents. So when the child says "help me, my home life is horrible", we compare our impression of them to our impression of their parents, and usually without even realising why, we don't take them seriously.

Paris Hilton is an adult survivor of childhood abuse and torture at the troubled teen wilderness programme. Now an adult she uses her platform to speak up, but on that platform she's also told some harrowing stories of how her reputation as a vapid, self serving mean girl/wild child once kept her silent. She wouldn't be believed and her pain would only be mocked or shamed if she spoke out sooner. It's only after years of rebuilding that reputation into one that better reflects who she is as an adult, people are ready to believe her now. Why? Because she wasn't likable then, but she is now.

The thing is, most of us don't grow up into beautiful, wealthy superstars who age like fine wine and are universally loved by every sane person on the planet. Some of us are traumatised as children, who grow into traumatised teens who grow into traumatised adults. Being a traumatised adult is better than being a traumatised teen in a lot of ways. Having the power to simply not speak to the people who abused us for all our formative years is a big one. Not needing the signature of those abusers to acsess things like shelter, sustenance, support and medical care is another. It's not all bad being an adult survivor. It's not easy either though.

Like, I'm only half joking when I say having a stable family you can rely on into your adulthood is a privilege. Most of us don't have that because the smear campaigns didn't just Thanos snap out of existence the moment we turned 18. Out extended families often still see us as the bratty, entitled, violent little shits our abusive parents have been telling them we are since we were walking. On top of that all those authority issues and behavioural issues and PTSD symptoms we had as kids are still there, because nobody believed us when we asked for help so we just never got it.

It has nothing to do with who we are as people, but we just give off "bad vibes." It makes us susceptible to revictimisation and it means when people see the resting bitch face or the anxious fidgeting or the deadpan tone of speaking, their natural human judgement meter decides they don't like us. So we don't get upgraded on the plane and we don't get free lattes and yeah we pay more for things like cars and services because the natural drive people have to give each other favors doesn't really work for us. So some of us don't get perks but that's okay, they're perks because not everyone gets them. It's not a big deal.

Accessing the world shouldn't be a perk of being untraumatised. But when we lose out on job opportunities because our interviewer finds a non traumatised person more likeable than us, it feels like it is. When we don't have a saftey net of familial support so it takes us longer to recover when we're down on our luck or just down in the dumps, it feels like it is. And when we are less likely to be believed when we are reporting either current or historic abuse, it feels like it is. And when we struggle to acsess medical care because our doctors associate typical behaviour of traumatised people with attention or drug seeking, it feels like it is.

[savage-sinister]

I find it frustrating and uncomfortable in fiction when children are used as props to make parent characters feel good about themselves, and as a reward for a romantic arc, rather than being characters with their own identity and agency.

And I think I feel that way because so often because in real life, many parents bring a child into the world simply as a reward for feeling successful in their romance, and to be props to make them feel good about themselves, rather than understanding that their children are full people with their own identity and agency that has to be respected.

[chronicsymptomsyndrome]

Having survived abuse from people with mental illnesses, I know the urge to warn others to be wary of those mental illnesses. I know how often it can feel like that is your only power in life…the only action you can take against what you went through. But listen. Just because a mentally ill person caused you complex trauma, doesn’t mean you get to generalize and slander and malign every person with that mental illness.

You do not have to forgive your abusers. but you do have to heal without spreading stigma and misinformation. you do have to heal without antagonizing or dehumanizing others who are also just trying to heal. you have to help break the cycle. because nobody can heal alone.

[nmolesofadrenaline]