undothedamage-blog

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Abusers can do nice things for people they are not abusing.

Abusers can do nice things for people that they are abusing.

Abusers can otherwise seem like nice, caring, supportive people when they are not actively abusing someone.

It does not mean they’re not fucking abusers.

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Me at therapy: I actually feel like I'm coping well right now with all the stuff with my ex.

Me Later: *gets email from lawyer about his demands for the divorce that night*

Also me: *can barely function and feels completely overwhelmed and defeated*

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One of the most common traits in a survivor is self-doubt. Especially after psychological abuse, survivors may spend months analyzing themselves and worrying that they might have actually been at fault. They may even suspect themselves of being a narcissist or a sociopath. A lot of this has to do with the sense of defectiveness that abusers instill in their targets. When someone you love betrays you, criticizes you, ignores you, or cheats on you, the default message absorbed is “something must be wrong with me”. But the truth is, when someone does those things, they are showing you what’s wrong with them–not you. They are revealing their own psychological damage and attachment issues. As you begin to accept this, you will stop worrying so much about yourself and instead learn how to offer yourself love. When we judge or distrust ourselves, we are only strengthening the message left behind by the abuser. Far too many survivors get diagnosed with disorders they don’t even have, when really it’s just unresolved trauma that needs your love and care.

The World is Quiet Here

(via holdyoursilence)

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To Anyone Who is Friends With Someone Who Experienced Emotional Abuse

We do need reassurance.

We need to know that you want to talk to us. We need to know you want to see us. We need to know you don’t hate us. We need to know we aren’t annoying you. We need to know we aren’t making you unhappy. We need to know it’s okay to trust you with our emotions. We need to know you aren’t leaving. We need to know you still care. We need to know that you want to be here.

We grew up learning that the things we thought were wrong. We learned to stay quiet. We learned to be “low-maintenance”. We learned to put everyone else first. We learned not to make eye contact. We learned to wait and see if we’d be screamed at or treated kindly this time. We learned to shrink down. We learned our opinions weren’t valuable. We learned that talking about our feelings was bad. We learned that if we weren’t good enough we would be left or hurt.

Please be patient. We know we’re being inconvenient when we ask you for the millionth time if you still like us, or if every little thing we do is okay, but please remember we are struggling too.

It doesn’t take long to say, “No, don’t worry you’re okay.” “I care about you.” “I want to see you.” “It’s okay.” “I’m here.” “You’re safe.”

Please don’t come into our lives and make promises of not being bothered if you can’t handle constantly reassuring us. Please don’t tell us to trust you and then leave.

Be honest with us and yourself about your limits and capabilities.

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My mom loves me. And she went through her own hellish divorce from an abusive piece of shit years ago. And she means well, and wants the best for me.

But she says things like “you have to get to a point where you’re so happy in your own life that nothing he does can get to you” and it just cracks my heart a little further.

Once her divorce was over and done with he disappeared. She didn’t have to spend the rest of her children’s lives being continually manipulated, criticized, or otherwise fucked with. She didn’t have to face him over and over and over again and fight off panic attacks while taking the high road and acting civil to prevent pissing him off or getting in trouble with courts that don’t understand emotional abuse.

He actively interferes in my happiness and my children’s happiness and I feel like people just think it’s on me to just positive attitude my way above his abuse. I mean, aside from the fact that recovery from the trauma of years of emotional/sexual/psychological/and even some isolated incidents of physical abuse doesn’t just happen overnight, it’s like expecting a bruise to heal even though somebody keeps smacking it. My abuse hasn’t ended.

And there isn’t much else I can do to try to rise above it than I’m already doing. Therapy. Reading the best resources I can on abuse. Medical treatment for panic disorder. Working with legal counsel. Limiting contact as much as I legally can. Keeping records of everything.

I’m doing everything I can.

But it’s not some magic cure that will immediately make it so I can just undo a decade of programming. It also does nothing to solve the medical problems I’m having, or the financial ones (that are largely his doing). And damn it, I shouldn’t HAVE to do extra work to rise above his behavior.

I should not have to create some unrealistic dream life so happy and perfect that his further abuse just doesn’t affect me. I spent my entire marriage trying to change myself to please him and make my life happy despite him. Leaving him was my way of saying NO MORE.

So, how about HE stops treating me like shit?

And like, I get it. He’s never going to change. I’m not delusional. But look, if you know someone in a situation like this, don’t tell them what THEY should be doing. Just say “you shouldn’t have to deal with this. It isn’t right.”

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Remember that! 

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Today my lawyer basically told me I needed to forgive my abuser so I could heal and move on.

Yeah. No.

First off, a lot of therapists who work with victims of abuse would tell you that forgiveness is not necessary for moving on and that telling someone they need to forgive their abuser can be detrimental to recovery. 

But on a more personal level, I gotta say that not forgiving him is actually a huge part in actively aiding my recovery. 

Because for the first time in my life it's an option I'm allowed to take.

I don't HAVE to forgive him. After all the times I forgave him just to keep the peace, or because I thought God demanded it (back when religion was a factor - it’s not anymore), or because I felt I had no choice, or to keep him from getting angry, or whatever...not forgiving him is one of the few spheres of power and control I can now hold onto. The very idea of forgiving him yet again doesn’t bring me peace. It makes me feel victimized again.

Also, just fuck the notion that people should grant forgiveness to somebody who will never ask for it because they'll never believe they did anything wrong.

Forgiving somebody who didn't know they fucked up because you chose to let it go without telling them they wronged you, sure. I can see how that can be beneficial in some contexts. 

But that's not the same as forgiving an abusive egomaniac who honestly believes he's justified in everything he has ever done to you because you're garbage.

Forgiveness is a gift. I'm not giving it to him. I destroyed my soul for years endlessly giving to him and believing that anything less would have been selfishness on my part.

Not forgiving him is my gift to myself.

[undothedamage-blog]

Abusive men pave the way for lazy men to get wives and girlfirends.

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you wanna know how your grandparents “worked through” their problems and didn’t divorce?

cause ya grandmama most likely didnt have her own assets or income and depended on your grandfather to support her and the family. she had no choice but to work it out. also the stigma a divorced woman would face? pfffffffft.

trust me alot of yalls grandfathers are/were awful people and your grandmother wouldve left him if she could

[undothedamage-blog]

you do not have to be perfect to be worthy of love

[undothedamage-blog]

PostItForward Prompt

Never forget that you are valid! Post a selfie with “valid” sticker 

Sorry. I have to skip this one because of privacy/safety reasons. But shout out to everybody putting themselves out there.

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The one thing you can control is how you treat yourself. And that one thing can change everything.

Leeana Tankersley (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

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Women hear it all the time from men. “You’re overreacting,” we tell them. “Don’t worry about it so much, you’re over-thinking it.” “Don’t be so sensitive.” “Don’t be crazy.” It’s a form of gaslighting — telling women that their feelings are just wrong, that they don’t have the right to feel the way that they do. Minimizing somebody else’s feelings is a way of controlling them. If they no longer trust their own feelings and instincts, they come to rely on someone else to tell them how they’re supposed to feel.

Men really need to stop calling women crazy. (via washingtonpost)

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I love to sing.

I was in my first musical when I was seven. I also sang in choirs, glee clubs, and such. And I sang at home. I sang for fun. I sang because I loved the music. I sang because I love to sing.

And my ex would tell me I was off key.

I could be singing to myself for fun in the privacy of our home and he’d point out that I was off key.

I told him it hurt my feelings.

And my ex would still tell me I was off key.

It took years before I finally got him to stop telling me I was off key.

For the longest time I assumed he was telling the truth and that he was just musically superior to me. He seemed so confident that he was musically superior. And after all, he played piano some. He had played the trumpet. He sang a little too...though I never felt he was as good a singer as he seemed to think he was. But that’s just the thing isn’t it?

Despite thinking that I never cut him down.

I didn’t point out, over and over and over again his singing weaknesses. I loved him. I cared about his feelings. I didn’t want to hurt him.

He used to excuse his cruelty by saying he forgot not to point out when I was off key, or to justify it because being off key annoyed him, or even distort it by pretending he was just trying to be helpful.

And I used to fall for it.

But here’s the thing...

I never asked for his advice or help and, in fact, requested multiple times he just leave me be so I could just sing for fun in my own home without worrying about putting on a perfect performance. 

I tolerated plenty of annoying things from him because that’s what you do when you love and live with someone. I didn’t point them out at every opportunity.

I don’t go around forgetting to not say things that I know hurt my loved one’s feelings. 

Each and every one of his reasons for continually telling me I was off key was utter shite.

Grown-ass adults who are good people do not need to be endlessly reminded NOT to say hurtful things, especially to somebody they supposedly love. They don’t just forget to not be hurtful.

Couples and roommates and friends tolerate all sorts of annoying quirks from each other all the time because that’s what grown-ass adults who are good people do when they value each other.

Grown-ass adults who are good people don’t spontaneously offer unwanted criticism under the guise of “helping.” I mean, some people do that, but the rest of us generally concur that those people are dicks.

Of course, these days, after learning so much about abuse tactics, and seeing much of my exes dishonesty during his escalating abuse post-breakup, I find myself wondering...

Was I actually off key?

[undothedamage-blog]

The more I read and learn about abuse the more I have these weird revelation moments in which I remember things from the past and recognize them as abuse for the first time, events and behaviors I used to make excuses for.

It’s always a mix of emotions when it happens. There’s the “aha!” aspect of course, which is intellectually rewarding. It feels good to better understand something that happened. And there’s hurt too. But there’s also terrible frustration because it’s just like “AUGH! I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT FUCKER DID THAT!” 

One thing I recently had to add to that list was diet sabotage. The realization came to me after reading about how abuser’s will sabotage victims who have a substance abuse problem, such as alcoholism. They’ll do things like bring home a six pack, even if they don’t drink, and say they want to have it on hand just in case their buddies come over (but somehow it’ll never get offered to said buddies). 

Now, I’ve never had a substance problem. But I spent much of my marriage on a diet, trying to lose weight (even when I was a healthy weight and in great cardiovascular shape). 

During those periods when I was trying to shed weight my ex would bring home a box of treats, make a point to tell me he had bought them for himself and I shouldn’t eat them, and place them in the kitchen. Then, after spending all day, or multiple days, resisting constant temptation I’d inevitably break down and have a treat. And not only would he sit back and allow me to feel terrible about it for breaking my diet, he’d pile on to my shame by making me feel bad for eating “his” food (food purchased with our joint grocery budget). I used to feel like such a gluttonous, selfish, loser. 

But wait a minute.

If they were really for him and him alone, why bring them home? Why not keep them in his locker at work/school? 

If they really were for him and if he really wanted them at home, why keep them in the kitchen? Why not hide them? Why make a big show of telling me about them at all?

And if they were really for him, why did it so often take ages for him to eat them? He wasn’t exactly the type to refrain from indulging in what he wanted. When it came to pot he’d get high multiple times a week. When it came to drinks he’d have so many I’d have to drive us home. When it came to porn he’d hardly go a day or two without watching. So why would he buy treats “for himself” and leave them forgotten for so long?

And why did it seem like he so seldom brought home the same treats when I wasn’t trying to lose weight?

Now I think I know why.

And it wasn’t just buying junk food when I was on a diet. When I wanted to be vegetarian it seemed like he’d purposely bring home the most tempting meat he could. We’d decide to have burgers for dinner. He’d had beef and I’d have a veggie patty. But then, even when we were super broke, he’d buy bacon as a topping. Bacon is fucking delicious. And it smells just as good as it tastes. So sometimes I’d cave, and he’d put bacon on my veggie burger. 

Now, I might be willing to make the case that he simply wanted bacon for his own burger and it was just my own weak will that sabotaged my efforts to be vegetarian. I’d even be willing to say (and in fact, used to make this very excuse for him myself) that maybe he was being a little unsupportive and selfish but who can blame a guy for wanting bacon? Except that not only was he incredibly unsupportive of my efforts to eat a vegetarian diet (regularly voicing his contempt for the very philosophy) but he also used these episodes to embarrass me in front of others. He’d broadcast my failure to stick perfectly to my vegetarian goal for laughs.

That’s something a lot of abusers do, "playfully” ridicule their victim in the presence of company. It’s a brilliant way to take them down a peg, often by targeting a flaw or mistake they know their partner is already feeling poorly about. And by doing it in front of friends or neighbors, or such, they insulate themselves from their partner’s displeasure. If she objects, he can simply manipulate the situation so that she comes off as the humorless and perhaps even unstable banchee of a wife while he’s the charming comedian.

Not surprisingly, after a while I gave up on being vegetarian. It was just too difficult to make that change with an unsupportive partner and housemate (especially considering all the other stress I was under by virtue of being in an abusive marriage). For so long I’ve believed I was just inherently weak-willed. It wasn’t until re-evaluating these occurrences in a new light that it dawned on me that I was set up to fail. And, in fact, when I think about times in my life where I had to abstain from something or add a new habit but he wasn’t there to interfere, I often accomplished those goals.

So now begins the long, arduous process of retraining my brain not to doubt my ability to do hard things. In these diet sabotage examples and in so many other ways, my ex eroded any sense I had in my own capabilities. He made me believe I was weak, and helpless. I just need to remember that, like so many other times and in so many other matters, he lied.