Other Let's talk about torture.

[Freida]

r maybe it is, maybe that is the reason for the, erm, embellishments of the actual violence?

I think this is the hard part -- that for them it really is this simple.

It was designed to feel shameful.

Designed.
I think that's the hard part. "Normal" abuse doesn't require planning. It just is what it is.
Designing abuse requires thought. Sometimes lots of thought. It's about more than taking out aggression on whoever is nearby
Its about creating a situation of total power/submissiveness.

ugh. That just hurts my soul.

 

[Ice_Fire]

It's about more than taking out aggression on whoever is nearby
Its about creating a situation of total power/submissiveness.

Yeah this get me bad. There were times when mother would just lash out. I didn't follow a rule or the rule had changed and although she hadn't told me, I was supposed to know so *whack*.

But the other times, the times when I'd be locked up in my room or the cupboard and then...just as I'd given up ever seeing anyone ever again, not even Dad. Then she would come back, with some new imaginative way to hurt me. Sometimes I knew I'd f*cked up but nothing would happen immediately. She kept me on edge for hours, days sometimes. And then, when I just started to think maybe I was getting away with it (by it I mean something like sitting down without permission, or not wanting to strip naked or whatever else. I never like acted out in a way 'normal' people would think of bad behaviour becuause that would probably have meant death to be honest. Felt like it anyway. But I would start to relax and then I would get it. So, I suppose I would learn that a) she never forgets and I will get it eventually. The not knowing is part of the punishment but it will come. and b) there's always more ways in which I can hurt. And it is that power trip.

Straight up violence is reactionary. These things are not, they're expressions of complete and utter control...

 

[Freida]

These things are not, they're expressions of complete and utter control...

This
I think this is the line between abuse and torture.
the level of control.

 

[Ice_Fire]

Well I made a bit of a social error today; I can't help but want to laugh. A colleague was talking about this one guy who screwed his Dad over years ago and that's the only person he'd ever consider torturing. Don't ask how we got onto the topic, hours in a private ambulance together and you end up on some pretty weird topics.

Anyhoo, he always said him and his brother were going to do this guy in "thinking up things that you wouldn't even imagine. But I wouldn't have it in me I ken that" and then he got onto it wouldn't be worth the prison time etc and (stupid) me "who says you'd get caught if he's that evil there's ways to do it without leaving a scratch". Idiot! Of course the next question was "oh aye, like what?" and i said "well there's water boarding for a start" and he didn't even know what the word meant. I forget sometimes that these things aren't even in most people's vocabulary... The irony though of the extent of a normal person's 'this is the most depraved sh*t you'd never believe but I don't for a second think you'd believe what me and bro said we'd do because it's sick. And I don't think I could go through with it.' and then there's me who immediately tops it with an even worse idea that he couldn't comprehend was a thing.

So I dug myself in deeper and went "oh yeah right you're a normal person. Sorry it's when....blah blah". Got looked at like I'd grown three heads.

He was chill, we're all a bit f*cked up in my job and know when not to ask any further. But we'd spoken about people who get direct cremations and rifts in families and stuff and earlier on he'd said about how he couldn't understand it but I cheerfully said that's what my mother is getting. And he said "you really hate her eh? If anything did happen to her would you go down south at all?" and before I knew it "aye to make sure she's dead" came out my mouth. And then we had the above conversation later and now I'm worrying that he's going to join the dots up...

Ah well. God forbid he now thinks I did it to someone else. That would be awkward.

 

[Freida]

And then we had the above conversation later and now I'm worrying that he's going to join the dots up...

Naw. Normies won't go there because they can't imagine actually meeting someone who did things like that or survived them.
Yes, they can see it on tv and read about it in the news, but actually having to personalize it? Nope.
Their brains won't wrap around it. So instead I'm betting if he thinks about it at all it's going to be along the lines of "who, I had not idea she was one of the goth gang "

I think it's one of the reasons it's so hard to talk about torture to our friends and family- because people who know us simply can't understand how "those things" could have happened to us. Once you put a face or name to it, well, that's a different thing.

 

[Weemie]

Naw. Normies won't go there because they can't imagine actually meeting someone who did things like that or survived them.

I had a bit of an internal shift at reading the conversation happening today, because I am one of those people who "did things like that." As well as survived "things like that." I suppose that is something that even on this thread, this specific type of torture has not been elaborated upon in any meaningful degree. There are a lot of posts on the sadism and cruelty and humiliation that we have endured.

But very little on that which we may have inflicted on others. Part of my experiences of torture include the actions of perpetration. When I met K again at J and C's house (alphabet soup, at this point, I just don't like looking at their names) my friend M was there. K tried to remove her clothing and get on top of her, presuming I was passed out on the other side of the room. I was not. I launched at him and pinned him and psychologically tortured him until he urinated on himself. I was a quarter of his size but he didn't move, not when my 18 was at his throat.

By then, because of him, even, I knew how to cause the maximum amount of damage with the least amount of pressure. I knew the things that human beings value about their bodies. The things they do not want to lose. The fear of imminently doing so is an extremely powerful motivator. This man had once yelled at me so viciously that I complied with his demands and shot another human being. This man had done things to me that eradicated all sense of my humanity. Perhaps he knew the extent to which I would be satisfied by murdering him outright.

Because he was one of the men who taught me that life is not important. Only profit. Only crack and meth. Only getting your dick wet. Only being the best, and the strongest, and the first. For most of the other incidents that I tortured people it was with the understanding that bigger and more powerful men were around me with rifles and shotguns. The parts of you that flinch and shiver whenever you hurt another person physically, when you know that your brain has at least a partially functioning limbic system, those parts can be silenced over time.

The utter silence of apathy. Ultimately I let him live, though to this day I cannot fathom the reasoning behind my choice to get off of him. At that point I wondered if he would launch at me and kill me. The 18 is long, hence the name, but knife fighting (even against someone who does not have a knife) is not at all an effective method of self-defense. I was calculating it all in my head, but he just left. And M was awake and told me to get out, too, and she never spoke to me again.

That was only one incident. For me it stands out, as I was 16, and I did it completely voluntarily, on my own, without the threat of external force. Unlike the majority of my other actions of torture and extended violence. (Violence, was not foreign to me, but I was never much for mindless cruelty. My acts of voluntary violence have been and were a response to a sudden flash of rage I could not get under control. Impulsive.)

 

[Freida]

K tried to remove her clothing and get on top of her, presuming I was passed out on the other side of the room. I was not. I launched at him and pinned him and psychologically tortured him until he urinated on himself.

I'm not really sure I follow why this is a bad thing. He was trying to rape your friend. You not only protected her, you made sure he understood what would happen if he ever tried it again.

How is this wrong?

Admittedly my view on this is a bit skewed, but I say A+B=C in this equation. B

She was pissed at you about it? Ya that speaks to HER mental/emotional damage. Not yours.

as for this..

Because he was one of the men who taught me that life is not important.

Nope. If you truly believed this you wouldn't be working your ass off trying to make a better life for you and those around you. And you damn sure wouldn't be on this forum sharing your experiences as a way to help others.

You were conditioned to believe this. And just like everyone else who escapes a cult, you also have to escape your programming.
And that's really, really hard to do.
But you are doing it.

 

[Weemie]

How is this wrong?

I think it is wrong because torture is never justifiable. What I did was not "torture" in a legal sense, but it was a type of psychological damage that resulted in explicit and genuine fear/survival responses from the other person. Responses that I specifically intended to elicit and that I was pleased with having done so. He was afraid for his life. He believed that I would cut his eyes out and mutilate him sexually.

And I had flashes of it in my mind that the intention for me to follow through with my threats was very present. I wanted to do it with every fiber of my being, but on some level I must have been aware that someone else who was innocent, was in the room, and I suppose I did not want to traumatize her any further? I do not know, that was not my actual thought process. I just stopped short of doing it and let him go.

I do not remember why I did it and there are still pieces of me that are angry that I did it. I had him right there and I "f*cking let him go." But I was proud of it, proud of the fact that I was controlling the situation and controlling him. That I had the power for once, that he knew that he could never f*ck with me again because I would prise open his skin and disintegrate him on the atomic level.

M was awake for most of it and watched it happen. She was afraid of me, and I do not blame her for that. What I did was scary and I do not mean because I was the best and strongest and most violent, but it was scary because I am capable of doing it. And if I can do it to him, I could potentially do it to her as well. Normal human beings do not torture others, even in self-defense, or after witnessing the beginnings of an assault.

She knew that I had something in me that was frightening. If I could do it to him, it is possible I could do it to her as well.

 

[Weemie]

The thing is, I often hear people discuss that they wish they could get revenge on their abusers.

But having acted the way I did and most likely traumatized someone who was already being abused by him - - there is a part of me that is angry that I let him go, but most of the rest of me, regrets that it occurred that way. I could have merely restrained him and called the police. How can I profess that I believe that all humans deserve dignity and compassionate treatment when in reality, I acted just like a thug. The same shit that I always did, the same behaviors that I had been forced to do I was now doing on my own.

No longer can I say I have the excuse of men with guns in the distance. There was no point of force. It was just me, revealing that I had been permanently altered by my circumstances. To be a monster, for real. My T says "you know logically that they forced you," but not that time. There was no force. I was angry at myself for not killing him, or cutting his dick off and making him eat it like Mason Verger style.

Even if he were in jail and I was a CO, and I had some legal authority over him, that type of behavior is wrong. No matter what he has done.

 

[Friday]

There’s a blur that happens with torture.

It happens with other forms of trauma, too… from observation, as I watch people mistake normal human anything with abuse, or whatever. ((Especially my son, who would see any kind of anger, including his own, as the same as his pinche pendejo father… until he finally got back into some full contact sports and got people who were not me, teaching him how to channel his anger and have some fun with it. Because not all anger is the same, full stop.)) For whatever reason? Torture broke that blur, for me, with other things, except combat. That is my other difficult blur, and whenever I have to use old skills/thinking in new times/places? I… don’t have the words to explain what happens. The scattered cracks along a vase, in one respect. Tungsten steel and rightness in others. Same when I use other skills.

Back on target to that blur…Meaning?

It f*cks me up faaaar more when I have used skills/methods I learned in that context in most others. But? If I am deliberately torturing someone, it doesn’t f*ck me up, exactly. I ‘simply’ change. The person who walks out of the room is different than the person who walked in. Hence why I avoid it, even when it would be useful/necessary. I can be that person. Very easily. It is much harder to NOT be that person.

But if I’m using those skills out of context, in everyday interactions, it breaks my heart and my mind. I can’t stop the blur. I see what’s totally right & justified as wrong. I can’t unf*ck my own head/heart.

It’s totally right and justified to use commensurate force.

Personally, for rapists, I tend to go with glass rods & hammers, rather than piss scared. But piss scared I see as commensurate with attempted rape, for certain. Even if those skills, and enjoying using those skills where there was need, f*cked your head a bit. I would see my friend as worth the pain, for. As opposed to it being wrong.

The thing is, I often hear people discuss that they wish they could get revenge on their abusers.

if you ever dig into some of my older posts, you’ll see me go off on this subject, fairly often.

As other people often get off on fantasizing about shit they know nothing about, whilst -at the time- I was really struggling with NOT thinking or doing exactly the same.

Even though I knew intellectually they didn’t really mean it, and were just talking shit, it was reeeeeeally difficult to deal with. If I talked the same way about their trauma histories? (Which I have neither need nor desire to, although I’ve deliberately done it a few times in person when I was pissed off). They’d not only be puking, and shaking, and sobbing on the ground, and in panic attacks… but I’d have been banned/had a zillion report posts on me. Because THEY can do it, about shit they know nothing about, but heaven forbid someone do the same to them. I wasn’t going to do that. Because I needed this resource, and kinda/sorta specialize in self control. So I simply wrote them off as dipshit idiots who could die screaming, for all I cared. Instead, I focused on what was hard for me. Rather than holding up a mirror to them. Because they? Were not my responsibility to educate.

In time I learned to take a step back, and see their blurs, for my blurs. Their nonsense ideas about magic fixes, with my nonsense ideas about magic fixes. Looking at skills to manage the problem, rather than sharing the cause & cares.

 

[Lionheart]

I just want to say that I am truly sorry for the torture y'all went through and the pain you endured. I think some of the things that happened to me border on torture, but I am unsure if it does or not. I just want to leave at this point. I was triggered tonight, and I got my blood pressure up. I don't feel so great at the moment. I am a survivor of sexual child abuse, and I am sure Complex-PTSD, I think I have experienced dissociation as far back as I can remember, age 3-4 years old. I think I have been a victim of psychological torture, taught to think very negative things about myself. From childhood into adulthood. Abuse was all I knew. As far as physical torture ...no, I've not gone through that and bless anyone who has. It is all abuse; it is all damaging. It is all very sad to me! I wish you the best that life has to offer, and hope that you heal down to your soul!!

 

[Weemie]

That is my other difficult blur, and whenever I have to use old skills/thinking in new times/places? I… don’t have the words to explain what happens. The scattered cracks along a vase, in one respect. Tungsten steel and rightness in others. Same when I use other skills.

I had to sit and read your post a few times. Because, yeah. Yeah, all of this. It was the same this year. I didn't wah-wah about it being on the level of anything traumatic, but I did assault four people in a bar and I did break a dude's pinky for following me across 3 buses and trying to sell me crack on the bus, in public. Everybody I tell about these incidents? Says that they don't make me a violent shithead. That I either acted in self-defense, or that I acted in response to clear "fighting words."

(The guys at the bar were mocking and making fun of my mom [who was there, so it was to her face while I was standing right there.]) I went blind with rage, always do. The last time someone f*cked with my mom? I went to the kitchen where I had been cooking instant noodles, took the pot off the stove, and poured the boiling/hot water down the balcony onto the neighbors heads. (I don't remember there ever being any consequences for this, either, but it absolutely happened cuz my mom remembers it too.)

If they had been making fun of me, yelling at me, whatever. I would have walked away because that is what you do, you don't start shitty, stupid barfights over nothing unless you're prepared to accidentally kill someone. And I'm not, anymore. Except for when I black out from rage and then? All bets, off. I don't throw punches. My first move is to ram your nose up into your f*cking brain.

The bar fight, I somehow managed in an unbelievable stroke of something, to put them in their place without anyone getting injured at all. I hit him in the chest, took him to the ground, rammed my elbow in his chest and then two guys got ahold of me and I slammed my heel into a guy trying to punch me, and then somehow (I think my mom came back) we were negotiating to end the fight. I said "get your f*cking hand off me" and he said "get yours off me!" so I let him go.

He didn't say shit to my mom again.

And it was just a fight, it wasn't a bad outcome. It wasn't a trauma. It wasn't anything, except in my brain, I am right back there. To being what I was as a kid.

It’s totally right and justified to use commensurate force.

Personally, for rapists, I tend to go with glass rods & hammers, rather than piss scared. But piss scared I see as commensurate with attempted rape, for certain. Even if those skills, and enjoying using those skills where there was need, f*cked your head a bit. I would see my friend as worth the pain, for. As opposed to it being wrong.

And I had to read this one again, too. Both you and @Freida seem so sure about this. And this incident is one where either people do not believe me (they think that I have made it up to seem "cool," which ... is ridiculous, to me, because I view it the total opposite.) OR they say "right on! He deserved it!" pretty much categorically. I'm the odd one out, always. It represents something that I don't want to be. I don't want to be a person who violates people's rights.

And even if they're a shitty dirtbag rapist motherf*cker, they still have rights.

(But I don't know, because I guess much like the people who hear me discuss this, when you mention your own responses to a rapist, I can understand exactly why you've done it. K wasn't just an attempted rapist, he was responsible for me being raped probably dozens of times. That's how he made his money. And I still think when I talk about him, that I f*cked it up by letting him live.)

Then the other parts of me kick online and start moralizing about human rights. Bullshit, you have to be human to have human rights, don't you? (But just because he's a rapist and a trafficker does not make him non-human, as rape and trafficking are actions that humans take every day, and have done so since the dawn of time.) I have this f*cking constructed worldview that works in its own little bubble but you know, when I step into reality it is not as neat.

I saw my friend as worth it, but I think I just did it for my own self-gratification. Because at a certain point I could have easily just restrained him. I had complete physical control of him, it would not have been difficult to resolve the situation peacefully. But I did not want peace. I wanted him to feel the type of fear that he instilled in the children that he forced me to harm.

וְאִם-אָסוֹן, יִהְיֶה–וְנָתַתָּה נֶפֶשׁ, תַּחַת נָפֶשׁ
BUT IF ANY HARM FOLLOW, THEN THOU SHALT GIVE LIFE FOR LIFE

עַיִן תַּחַת עַיִן, שֵׁן תַּחַת שֵׁן, יָד תַּחַת יָד, רֶגֶל תַּחַת רָגֶל
EYE FOR EYE, TOOTH FOR TOOTH, HAND FOR HAND, FOOT FOR FOOT

כְּוִיָּה תַּחַת כְּוִיָּה, פֶּצַע תַּחַת פָּצַע, חַבּוּרָה, תַּחַת חַבּוּרָה
BURNING FOR BURNING, WOUND FOR WOUND, STRIPE FOR STRIPE

וְכִי-יַכֶּה אִישׁ אֶת-עֵין עַבְדּוֹ, אוֹ-אֶת-עֵין אֲמָתוֹ–וְשִׁחֲתָהּ: לַחָפְשִׁי יְשַׁלְּחֶנּוּ, תַּחַת עֵינוֹ
AND IF A MAN SMITE THE EYE OF HIS BONDMAN, OR THE EYE OF HIS BONDWOMAN, AND DESTROY IT, HE SHALL LET HIM GO FREE FOR HIS EYE’S SAKE

It seems to say... you exchange burning for burning. But once the burning has been completed, you must let him go. And I did. I let him go. Maybe it wasn't anything to do with me at all. Maybe it was just God loosening my grip.