How Do You Define Abuse?

[LilacMoon]

How many people treated you as a thing instead of a person who deserved humanity and compassion?

+ 1

There are so many types and shades of abuse that it can be a tough thing to try and define. But personally I believe in hindsight (overall) there can be a lot of clarity. Once you are physically removed from the situation, and have grown more on your own (as your own person & individual, and not as someone else's crutch, victim or scapegoat) in a less toxic environment, you can often gain a much clearer (more objective) perspective of your experiences, and have (or develop) the emotional strength to acknowledge and deal with them honestly.

At least that has been the case for me.

 

[camabelu]

@GWhizz I wanted to respond to the comment you made about the abuse you suffered at the hands of your father being your fault because you allowed it.
My abuse matches yours in that it was done by our fathers. I think I wrestled harder with that issue (I allowed it so I have to take responsibility) than maybe any of the others - and, as you know, the list of what must be dealt with can seem endless. I learned something along the way that helped me a lot with the self-blame because it makes sense to me, and so it provided a jumping-off place for shifting my belief. It's this: when we're children, we are dependent on our caretakers for our survival. Literally dependent - as in, we'd go hungry and have nowhere to put our heads down at night without them until we reach a certain age. When we're being abused by someone on whom we ARE literally dependent, our minds have an impossible dilemma to solve. Without the possibility of hope, we, at the very least, fail to thrive (to use a psychological term) so it's instinctive to unconsciously search for valid reasons to believe an unbearable situation can be changed - that the possibility at least exists. And if we make the abuse the fault of our fathers then there is no way out; no possible hope. But if we make it our own fault, there's an element of control that we can cling to. It sounds counter-intuitive in a way but given the choice between not surviving and being wrong and guilty, there really IS no choice. So we internalize the blame. None of this is conscious and by the time we are far enough away from the situation to be able to even think about dealing with all the acting out and the rest of the fallout, that blame is firmly in place. It doesn't matter if the logical argument that we're not to blame makes sense because it isn't the intellect that needs to heal. It's our spirits and our inner-selves.
I'm far along the path of healing but I'm not going to pretend something that isn't true. I still struggle with this in terms of behaviour. Not nearly like I used to, but the residuals are still with me. Still, it improves slowly all the time and I refuse to believe there isn't a place where full healing can happen.
I hope that helps a bit.