Is It Normal Not To Be Believed? (like Friends, Family)

[greenleaf]

Those people have a vested interest in seeing things their own way. To accept your version of events probably means having to accept responsibility that they don't want to accept. They're going to have their own way of seeing things that makes it possible for them to live with it.

I think that a related issue can be a deep-level fear of confronting the perpetrator(s). Perpetrators can be people who use power over others in a pretty dangerous way, and I think that peoples' monkey brains can tell them to defer to that person, take that person's "side", etc. without "conscious" awareness, whatever that is... (It's safer to be a "friend" of the big strong monkey! The abused person often has much less power.) I think that supporting unjustly used power semi-consciously causes huge problems in our society in many ways.

We also may all be influenced by this dynamic in more innocuous ways. I've never seen research on this though; the people setting research agendas tend to have power...

 

[Anarchy]

@greenleaf, I think there is a lot of that subliminal monkey brain stuff going on, and from my own anarchist (an = without archos= rulers) point of view, the purpose of the indoctrination centres that are state sector schools*, the gaslighting, alarmism and propaganda that is the state sector and state licensed mainstream media, and the work of the court chroniclers and "his-story-ones" (who's story? the kings story - all good things are due to the king, all bad are due to those who question him)...

is to condition us to accepting that it is somehow right and normal for some people to abuse and parisitize other people, and even (when dressed in appropriate costumes, and wearing appropriate hats and badges - and after due statist ritual) to murder other people.

If we rigourously apply the golden rule (in "negative" form; if we express it in "positive" form it is a performative contradiction): Do not do unto individual others that which we would not wish done unto our individual selves.

and we rigourously apply individual interpersonal boundaries and individual personal responsibility for decisions and actions

we are all, small "a" anarchists

_____________________
*I don't mean that in any way as critical of the caring individuals who devote their lives to teaching - it's a criticism of the institution and the assumptions which it is founded upon.

 

[Eleanor]

The Solomon Asch experiments with group conformity actually look at an aspect of this. We are socialized/taught how to process information and what to believe, and the effect is so powerful it can actually alter perception.

Add to that a vested interest in the outcome, or fear of consequences, and you've got a pretty powerful "mind altering" protocol.

Plus it is amazing how skeptical many (most?) people are when another person reports an experience that doesn't conform to their own experience. At a certain point one decides which attitude to cultivate... And what kind of confirmation one accepts...

 

[Anarchy]

@Eleanor Likewise the Stanford prison experiment and the Milgram experiment.

The question has been aired as to the motivation of the psychological associations in discouraging further experiments in this area. One of the suggestions is that they do not want the nature of coercive social control to be scruitinized (Davi Barker is one who has discussed this at length, and proposed further experiments).

There is still a popular impression of a "whig" theory of history; that it is a process of ever forward and upwards improvement, that everything now is better than anything which came before, and that science continually re examines its axioms and assumptions.

The popular assumption is easily disproven; if institutional science were soley interested in knowledge and well supported arguments - then why would it be so difficult to for example publish a paper concluding positive outcomes from private gun ownership in say the "New England Journal of Medicine" anything at all offering support for telepathy, ESP or big foot in any scientific journal, or a paper with conclusions critical of "anthropogenic climate change" in any of the mainstream climate journals. It is not necessary to take a position on any of those subjects, merely observing that there is a bias present is sufficeint.

The buggers run in herds (arguably more so when upsetting a single committee member with a vested interestcan lead to state sector funding being cut, and a career destroyed), everything is interpreted through the current paradigm and anyone who critically questions the axiomatic asumptions of the current paradigm is ignored, belittled and diminished, and if those methods fail, is viciously attacked.

Even before state sector funding, that abuser, gaslighter and charlatan; Sigmund Freud, invented an elaborate deception to avoid believing honest accounts given by his female patients of being sexually abused.

 

[Whirlwind]

The concept of "delayed onset" PTSD is completely beyond most people, but it is actually quite common amongst sufferers. That is, we can appear fine at the time, or even for years afterward. Sometimes we don't become symptomatic until a long time has elapsed.

I was fine for decades before I crashed and burned so to speak. Its real and if I were completely honest, I'm not sure I would have believed this was possible until it happened to me.

The truth of abuse is too ugly for most people to accept, they don't want to believe it really happens. Even people close to us, many of my closest relationships provided the least support. A statement about them or my choice in people....

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I have found that there are very few people with the ability to think for themselves. Thus the great crowd of people not open to the truth which is so powerful.

Blaming the victim is also widespread but I believe that things are starting to change with more education and awarenesses being raised.

When I first broke my silence, the denial and silence was deafening from my family of origin.

It took me so many years to take better care of me and not expose my vulnerabilities to others who were not safe.

 

[ghotiff]

I struggle with this also. Next to black and white not believing is minimization where people believe you but only so far. As I've posted elsewhere, I have huge problems with minimization (even coming from myself). :banghead:

 

[Anarchy]

Have just started reading Judith Herman's "Trauma and Recovery"
Disbelief and dismissal appears to be the normal position, it seems to take constant effort to make belief possible.