• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

Anyone else struggle with hating or blaming their abusers?

Status
Not open for further replies.

Briellewannabe

Learning
The focus of my therapy is shifting and it is making me a little uncomfortable, though probably in a good way... though it doesn't feel like it.

I have never hated or blamed the men who abused me. I don't in any way like them either. I was sexually abused by a neighbor from ages 4-6. I didn't tell anyone and my parents were not involved with their 9 kids enough to notice anything was wrong. I was also raped when I was 13 by a customer on my paper route; I got pregnant and later miscarried. I didn't tell anyone about that either. My home wasn't the right environment to bring those things up... but also I 100% believed that both were my fault.

I blame myself and I hate myself for what happened. When days get really bad and the suicidal thoughts are high, it's all aimed inward.

The last year or so I've slowly started getting angry at my parents for their neglectful parenting (which extends beyond not protecting me from abusers), but that's about as far as my anger goes outside me. Mostly I get stuck in the "what-ifs" and "should haves." It make daily life difficult and the rough days almost unbearable.

My therapist wants to work on that. I had a rough day on Mother's Day (always do) and got really suicidal again for a couple days. Last session she kept saying that the abusers were to blame, and logically I know that makes sense. I'm in law enforcement, I understand the law, but of course it seems like I'm the exception.

I don't understand my abusers. I don't know why they did what they did. I don't know if they were abused or went through something horrible. I don't know if their life was total shit or if they were born with their brains wired and didn't have much of a choice, and if they needed help and treatment. I cannot know, and because of that, it feels like the only option is to blame myself for not doing anything about it. From not telling anyone (though I didn't feel like I could--long story, not important) to continuing to to go back to my abuser (though there were threats against my other 6 sisters if I didn't)... I hate the little girl I was and I blame her. And it both feels justified and unfair of me. I hate the 13 that was so ignorant and stupid for being so trusting, for not knowing any better.

I don't know how I can ever shift that. That hate has been there since I was 4... so over 22 years now. That hate and blame and guilt has made me wish death and attempt to act on it since I was 4.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? Were you able to shift your blame and anger and remove the guilt? It doesn't seem possible and it's making me stress and uncomfortable.
 
I could have written your post OP, the ages were a bit different and the way abuse played out but the self hatred was there in all it’s glory. It has shifted now, im more empathic to my younger self, more able to see how few choices I had and how little support.

Things that helped me were
- really working on it in therapy. Being able to verbalise my anger and disgust at myself and letting my T challenge it
- being around kids the sane age as I was then, seeing what they are and aren’t able to do for themselves, seeing how much help and support they really need.
- really challenging my own thinking every time I feel myself wing critical of myself - as the child I was or the adult I am now. Literally not accepting any kind of harsh talk towards myself.
- really looking at the behaviour of the other people, not from a point of trying to understand it but knowing the nature of it. The first time my T said I had been groomed and abused I looked shocked and appalled, the second time less so, etc, etc - it’s a case of really chipping away at that thought process and recognising that for whatever reason someone chose to hurt you. The reason isn’t really any of your business and the blame lies fully with them.
- not shaming or blaming myself. If you blame yourself for others abusing you, it makes it easier for you to give yourself a hard time too. You didn’t deserve it then and you don’t deserve it now.

It’s a process of constantly challenging yourself and examining what actually happened - there are still times I slip back into “it must have been me”, but challenging that comes easier and feels less like a lie I tell myself.

It’s hard but, with work, it’s possibke to change.
 
I used to hate my abuser. And I used to be so, so angry at her. I put almost all of the blame on myself, though, telling myself I had asked for it and she just did what she did to protect herself. (My abuser, my ex-wife, was a CSA and rape victim.)

I was angry, so angry, for years. I thought all my power came from my anger, and that if I wasn't angry that would mean I accepted what she did.

Slowly, with years of therapy, I was able to get through the anger, until I reached a point where I realized that I would be a healthier and happier person if I forgave her. And with the help of my therapist, I was able to do that.

Do I still blame her for her choices and hold her responsible? Hell yes. I realize now she made the choice to abuse me. She's a horrible person who deserves all the worst in life! But she's also an incredibly damaged person. I no longer hate her. Usually I'm not angry anymore - though I have my moments - and I have forgiven her for my own sake, which has made it easier for me to try to stop blaming myself.
 
Im in the same spot in T now, only really replying so you know you arnt the only one in this stage, my shame is still eating me alive! But ill be reading any replies you get see if i can pick up some tips :)
 
I haven't totally resolved this but there are various things that helped me. It helped to understand that being angry at them didn't feel safe at the time. That the anger had to go somewhere and it went towards me instead. That I had been trained into blaming myself for others behaviours and actions already, from the start. I was indoctrinated into thinking that way. My internalised inner parent, created by my parents and others, was a self belittling blaming and shaming one. Never seeing any good. Always only bad.

It also helped me to read literature on abuse which discusses this and places it in an important place on the recovery journey. That it wasn't possible to fully heal without addressing it.

It helped me to look at anger, its role in human functioning, how we have choices in how we express it. That anger and acts of aggression are 2 different things. Feeling anger is a healthy reaction to our boundaries being violated. When it isn't a dysfunctional go-to habit of course.

It also helped to read about empathy and boundaries and how over empathising with others and not empathising with myself creates all sorts of vulnerabilities.

I helped to confront myself on an uncomfortable fact. Above all else I wanted to avoid harming others. And yet I was emotionally physically and in every way abusive - to myself. I was an abuser.

You can look at trying to understand them if you want to and you can even have compassion for them if you decide to do so but that in no way takes away the reality that there will be anger in there for you and it has to come out some time. That it is normal healthy and safe. That it may be daunting to look at it but it is safe to do so.
 
Things that helped me were

Suzetig, thank you so much for your post. That was incredibly encouraging. I'm really bad at challenging myself, so hopefully that is something that gets worked on in therapy.

Im in the same spot in T now,

Ooops. Sent that too soon. Sorry.

Suzetig, just thanks. I really appreciate your share.

And Bristol, I'm sorry you're in a similar situation. Hopefully we'll both get through it!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
@Briellewannabe, I found your post very helpful. I endured something different personally, but I have some of the same feelings as you. I don't blame them. I blame and hate myself. I was traumatized by two people. Most recently, my ex husband and as a child, by my brother. I've never really had a desire to know why my ex abused me, and I'm not sure why that is. My brother on the other hand, I desperately want to know why - what did I do to cause this? or what was so bad for him that he needed to take it out on me. I don't think I'll ever have those answers though. I think in the end I need to work on myself and how to make that shift, as you put it. I've only just started working on this in therapy and already it feels really hard. I will hope for the best for both of us! :hug:

Thank you for sharing Suzetig. In my own therapy appointment today we have started working on really dealing with my trauma. Your experience is very helpful.
really working on it in therapy. Being able to verbalise my anger and disgust at myself and letting my T challenge it
Did you find in time you started to believe your T? He kept challenging stuff I was saying today, but I just can't bring myself to believe him. Does that just change over time?

not shaming or blaming myself. If you blame yourself for others abusing you, it makes it easier for you to give yourself a hard time too. You didn’t deserve it then and you don’t deserve it now.
How were you able to get to this point? I can't even imagine now feeling shameful. I imagine it must just take time. Thank you again for sharing.
 
It’s been very hard work - and I slip back all the time. So, today I feel ok, I know it wasn’t me and I don’t blame myself, next week, tomorrow, I’m an hours time who knows - that belief is far from a stable thing.

It’s not so much that I came to believe my T more like I ran out of ways to fight it. My T and I have talked, and fought, and argued our way through 5 years of therapy - she has never wavered in her care of me, she has consistently valued me and held me in high regard. That was very new for me and made it safe enough to, slowly but surely, tell her how I felt about myself and my abuse and the people who abused me. And her view of me still never changed but everything she said about me felt like a lie - that for me to accept what she said was a way of letting myself off the hook rather than being an accurate reflection of what I had been through.

Little by little her sense of my worth rubbed off on me and I began to question what I told myself about what happened. Not big questions but just little bits of “what if”, what if they did know what they were doing to me, what if I was too young to stop it, what if I was a stuck as my T says I was. Literally chipping away at it until I realised my questions were fewer, and had changed so instead of “what if” they became questions about how I wanted my life to be, what was stopping me from moving on with my life etc.

Its been a long process and it’s been very painful but on a good day I can say it wasn’t my fault, people chose to treat me badly and I deserve to be loved and cared for. And it doesn’t feel like a lie any more.

I have to say that shame is still my go to place, I have to really fight that part of me that would have me think I’m shameful to my core, but I know now that it’s a lie that other people told me to keep me in a place where I took the blame for them - I need to remind myself of that daily at times and I can really struggle with it. So it’s not about never going there, more about being able to get yourself out of it again.
 
It’s been very hard work - and I slip back all the time. So, today I feel ok, I know it wasn’t me a...
I so appreciate your posts, Suzetig!!! You have no idea. I imagine my process will be somewhat similar. I have the exact feeling you describe, of thinking your T was saying those lies to let you off the hook. That's what I'm really struggling against now.
 
I haven't totally resolved this but there are various things that helped me. It helped to understand th...

Wise words.Thanks as you put the light on my own tendency to other empathise with others while sacrificing my own self. Its something I'm constantly trying to balance. Very testing while living around people that abused me and people that invalidate me. I've found inner child work to help and visualising my inner child how it would respond to my actions in times of distress.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top