Isn't abuse black and white?

[Friday]

Trauma is nearly always pretty durn black and white. Life? Isn't.

I think that's where a lot of the disconnect comes in. Trying to apply black and white to life, or grey to trauma.

Take the

For example, I think any time an adult touches the child in his/her private area it should be taken seriously.

There's super black and white, for you.

Here's Grey: I've done so tens of thousands of times. Maybe hundreds of thousands. Every diaper change. Every bath time for years. Every trip to the potty for years. Every yeast infection. Every time I picked him up, as an infant. Every time he rode on my shoulders as a child. Every time I played pony -or brontosaurus- and he rode on my back. Tickle fights. Wrestling matches. Removal of splinters (dude. Trees aren't slides.). 2 removals of bee stingers. 1 "I don't even want to know what you thought carrying marbles in your foreskin was a good idea. Yes, I know I told you not to poke them in your nose, I didn't think I ALSO had to...NVM. BRB with Vaseline. It won't stay stuck forever. Promise. And, no, don't worry about the wall (peeing around a marble leads to uncertain results). We'll clean it up together. Everything is going to be fine, kiddo. Just don't do this again, yeah?" ((He'd watched a cartoon where an elephant blasted a ball out of his trunk, and he wanted to be a cannon, too. :facepalm: )) Oy. Kids. And that's just using my own cultural definition of "private area".

Trying to apply black & white to life, or grey to abuse? Just doesn't work.

 

[desiderata310]

I don't even want to know what you thought carrying marbles in your foreskin was a good idea

Ok.. ok..I ... @Friday you win. I've NEVER dealt with that and my boys. I can't even...

 

[WishfulThinking123]

I think that's where a lot of the disconnect comes in. Trying to apply black and white to life, or grey to trauma.

Agreed! Great way to put it- I think I often try to apply the "grey" to my trauma...ugh

 

[mylunareclipse]

Thats a good way to put it. Trauma is black and white and life is grey, but where do the two intersect? Especially when it's relational trauma?

 

[ladee]

For me, once I began to understand that certain things happened, that caused me problems my entire life, I stopped worrying about black, white, grey. I was 'wounded' and needed to heal. And if someone did something over a healthy boundary, it was abuse.... I had to take all that 'overthinking' and let it go, or sidetrack it... because I had work to do because , for instance, my mother never stepped in when the sibs were dog piling me with verbal abuse....not just sibs kidding each other, because I was not allowed to say anything with out getting my mouth 'accidentally' slapped too hard.... being the scapegoat was crazy making ... all of them..... a line, and then me... alone... to figure it out....

I got to the point in my own therapy that it made no difference what 'color' it was, it hurt me, and I needed to heal from it.... I needed to say out loud that it hurt, and it made me feel xyz.... because when no one allows you to say it,or they don't hear it... it hurts even more..... The only one I ever made excuses for was my mother, I was too enmeshed with her and it took me years to untangle that mess....

Having great trust with my T helped, because she wouldn't say, well, maybe so and so had a bad day,or ever once tried to get me to see it from their point of view....she listened, we talked, she validated, and then later on I was able to see that some things were not as serious.... but at the time, because I had a target on me, it all hurt....

So, for me, I dealt with what hurt me..... what caused me to doubt my right to be on this earth and interact with other humans.....

I'm sorry there are so many fine lines we can get tangled in, the point is,,, something happened to each of us to get us here.... talk it out, do EMDR, what ever you have to.... to acknowledge we were hurt as children..... and longer, we can all look at the same painting and see something different.... such is our life.... different for each of us.... I just wanted the pain to stop..... so I clumped it all together and proceeded to get on with my healing and life.... such is my hope for all of us... just to heal and be free as we can be....

 

[WishfulThinking123]

@ladee Beautifully said... I am sorry for the pain you went through :(

 

[mylunareclipse]

because when no one allows you to say it,or they don't hear it... it hurts even more..... The only one I ever made excuses for was my mother, I was too enmeshed with her and it took me years to untangle that mess....

Thank you for this. so important. I think it's where I am right now. I have kept quiet and even denied myself to express anything, just taking it in, so that now I am so so angry and I don't want to think about black and white. I just don't care. Bleh. The thing is that my T is the one that got me to see "anger" to feel "anger" and tell me it was ok. I think she's trying to help to say it's ok to feel anger even towards people you think you love i.e. your parents, that it won't make you a bad person for feeling angry at them, even though they fed you and clothed you and "loved you" they still hurt you, so it's ok. But my brain hijacks this messages and turns them into: maybe the abuse didn't happen, maybe they weren't that bad, maybe there's some grey in this, maybe I need to forgive.
That's why I think for now like you I maybe need to put all this black and white etc talk away. I cannot look at that if I need to feel this pain/anger.

 

[ladee]

@wishforescape , this part of our journey is about rewiring our brain.... if we were conditioned to 'love them anyway', then getting angry is not love, to THEM.... but a very natural feeling of being hurt and betrayed.... and you DO feel the anger, so express it and worry about if it's right or wrong later, hard to do... but that is our old PTSD brain keeping us stuck in a loop to keep us from moving forward....

And one way I try to let go of mental roadblocks, is I have a box, I personally call mine a God box, but I write down what is standing in my way, and put it in that box...Yours can be a Mickey Mouse box, it doesn't matter, it can just be THE box...... may have to do it more than once..... and it's not magic.... it's just a symbolic way of saying I cant carry this right now... and somewhere along the line, you will start to see it's a non issue anymore, or at least not as large....

You do deserve to heal, and to find happiness, and to not live the rest of your life trapped by your past... all of us deserve that.... so,, hope, in your own way, that makes sense to you, to put it down, and do the work to be free.... sending gentle hugs, because I do understand...

 

[mylunareclipse]

You do deserve to heal, and to find happiness, and to not live the rest of your life trapped by your past... all of us deserve that.... so,, hope, in your own way, that makes sense to you, to put it down, and do the work to be free.... sending gentle hugs, because I do understand...

Thank you so much! It helps so much to be able to put thoughts and feeling into words and share them here. It makes me feel a little less crazy and understood. This work is hard and I had no idea what I was getting myself into two years ago! but ya I feel trapped by my past still and hope one day to be more free from it.

 

[Neverthesame]

((He'd watched a cartoon where an elephant blasted a ball out of his trunk, and he wanted to be a cannon, too. :facepalm: )) Oy

Thanks Friday.
Now my sides hurt. :roflmao:

 

[ILoveLife]

I'm still sleepy from my nap so I don't think I read all the replies, and I'm sorry, will return to read better.

I went through what the "normal" members of my family never considered abuse per se, because it wasn't either visible or provable. My father did emotional incest, after the separation with my mother. It's a grey area of abuse, because I don't know if he ever did actually touch me sexually back when I was 4 to 6 when I lived close to him. I have weird memories and am nauseated by remembering his smell, but I remember him acting like I was his wife rather than his daughter and having innappropriate behaviours not fatherly like. There are other gaps as well, as my family knowing for sure I slept in his apartment multiple times and the apartment only having his bedroom and a living room with no place to sleep, so where did I sleep?

Anyway, for years I loved him, and didn't think he was abusive, just a little screwed up since he had bipolar disorder and was an alcoholic. I thought it was normal for fathers and daughters to be attracted to each other until very late in life (maybe read too much Freud). I was later raped in two separate occasions by two separate people while intoxicated with drugs and alcohol, and I had relationships with those people after the abuses, one that lasted years and was also physically and emotionally abusive. In treating that trauma my T it came in discussion that I could've been previously abused by my father.

Since memory is completely screwed, I can't remember it all or prove anything. Since I can't prove it, and also have a bunch of other mental disorders that basically render my opinions invalid by the stigma of others, I wasn't abused according to my family.

The only person who validates my abuse is my T. My mother also emotionally neglected me, and has a hard time accepting her own abuse in her own childhood.

So, my childhood abuse is in a grey area. It was never violent, it was full of "love" by my father and "protection" by my mother.
Maybe you guys have a different opinion, but to this day I'm not sure if I was actually abused, I do have all the symptoms, I just can't fill the blanks.

 

[WishfulThinking123]

I don't think I can comment on whether or not your father sexually abused you-I am really sorry you are having these gaps in your memory. However, emotional incest is something that can really affect you for a long time without the help of a T. In my own family I struggled with this for a long time and still do- co dependency issues with my mother because, my mother had me comfort her emotionally and was extremely controlling. I love my mother dearly-I really do and she tried her best but, I eventually became the only one she felt comfortable sharing her struggles with when I was a child. I felt like I always had to comfort her after she had a fight with my dad- anyways don't want to get into all of that but, I think it is a grey area only because, people don't understand it. I also think it is grey because, it is not necessarily an intentional thing. My mother never meant to hurt me in this way- however, even now I feel so responsible for my mother's well being.