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Other Let's talk about torture.

Yeah, didn't say it was.
Oh my apologies, I definitely didn't intend to presume on your part! And you raise an excellent point and an issue very near and dear to my heart as well: the fact that there is a definition of torture that is not based on state violence and it's absolutely worthy to call attention to for precisely these reasons. The parts I quoted above were of note to me and I also appreciated his take on the parallels between torture and privacy/intimacy.
 
@Weemie I can't quote properly on my phone but when I wrote severe to extreme pain, I do include psychological pain. It's the same wirings, and I remember feeling so emotionally afflicted I felt actual physical pain. The weird thing (or not so weird) being that painkillers do effectively work against these. So really, I don't differentiate much. For me it becomes difficult to choose between physical and psychological pain, as to pick the "less worse" but any kind of pain now is simply triggering and I have a very low emotional threshold before the brain just going fizzing.
 
I told t yesterday that I had claimed the word "torture" when I was at the retreat and now with her. It's the oddest feeling because this is a thread. One a website. With people who get it. People who have been thru this. People who understand what it's like. And honestly - it's a bit unnerving. My brain wants to do the whole "see Fre, these people were in that situation - you are just a lying attention whore". In my defense my response is...STFU brain. (finally!!!!!!)

So for those struggling with the definition, I'm tossing out two articles that helped me understand the idea of sadism/torture/yes its real/not just an unfortunate event. The first one is written for police on how to deal with a sadist and what to look for in their victims. The second is a check list from a human rights organization on violent actions. The website is huge, but this particular page hit me hard because I come up in so many of the categories

I know we don't do trigger warnings, but I won't lie. I reacted really badly when I first found these because I was seeing ME. I'm the person they are describing. But in a sick/good/wtf kind of way it actually helps because when brain says "attention liar" I can go back to these and say... No. These things happened. They happened to me. With the intent of torturing me. (ugh..will that sentence ever stop making me want to puke?) So they apply to me. Which means the verbiage belongs to me also.

So here ya go...

The sexual sadist

The torture checklist
 
I told t yesterday that I had claimed the word "torture" when I was at the retreat and now with her. It's the oddest feeling because this is a thread. One a website. With people who get it. People who have been thru this. People who understand what it's like. And honestly - it's a bit unnerving. My brain wants to do the whole "see Fre, these people were in that situation - you are just a lying attention whore". In my defense my response is...STFU brain. (finally!!!!!!)
I’m so happy you can get there. I don’t really know if I do. Like yeah, rationally, I do. Inside? I just can’t compute that people with military grade trauma are the ones I’m relating to.

I am bracing myself already at the headline of the first article. I’m feeling this is going to hit home in ways I’m not expecting.
 
It did. f*ck

Edit: I have some caveats about the tone of the first article and the claim of lack of consciousness that I always find useless or grotesque; but yes it does exist as such. In any level, it’s the seeking for power over someone that is at play.
 
It did. f*ck
Make sure to take gentle care of yourself coraxxx and anyone else who ventures to read these definitions. Steel yourself up and get some cold water, perhaps with ice cubes in and a little elastic band on your wrist. They can be very blunt. I really appreciate the resources being linked here @Freida so thank you kindly and I see myself within many of these descriptors as well.

Some of them I did not even know had specific names such as the clapping on the ears and whatnot. I have a cauliflower ear from it, heh. The stress positions in particular are hard. I find exercise, yoga, repetitive activities, and inhabiting my body itself at times to be a visceral trigger. There are days that I have panic attacks which last all day.

Until I found appropriate medication I was truly ready to kill myself.
 
Holy shit. The list of traits of sexual sadists. My abusers really weren't anything special, were they? That article describes them to a T. Maybe so they're the great white shark of predators, but in a sea with many other great white sharks.

The part about wanting "to be her/his god" is really messing with me. That is what he wanted of me and that is still how I feel. I wish I didn't feel the way he wanted me to.
 
Yeah, I was feeling a bit bold today. But it also feels relieving that it does fit. At the end I still feel absolutely asinine because I wasn’t even detained. I do know the methods of control were far more convoluted than being detained; and in actuality did sum up to being detained. This is making me think of how much a legal frame such a marriage can, in certain cases, equate to detention. Not always but if the pressure is such that you might be shunned or loose everything, I think many situations of domestic violence actually can correspond to situations of torture.

It is a weird feeling of relief to read that constant verbal sexual harassment does constitute a violation. It is something I kept on thinking as not that bad because well, it doesn’t scar, it doesn’t kill. That voice still does haunt me if I don’t manage well. And death threats and threats of violence. Towards the end it was pretty much constant. I also very rarely could sleep properly. Either because of pushy sexual intercourse, either because I was full on too terrified to let myself fall asleep. I feel bad admitting it even though I know it’s not my fault. There was a point even unwanted sex felt better because as long as it went, I new there would be no injuries and no rage. There is an entire part of me that already was devoted to flop, and dear she flopped and flopped again and again.

There was a point I ended up laughing in my gargles because he started to strangle me, then I flopped, and he got scared I might actually die. That day I understood I actually did have the f*cking leash. Idiot.

But I never fell asleep again for more than a year.
 
But it also feels relieving that it does fit.
Ya -- once I got over the WTF notion it did help me see that it was more than I thought it was, which was why it's been helpful. There was a name to what had happened, a name for what kind of demon he was.

I have another one that goes way more in depth but I didn't want to put it up yet unless y'all want it because that one sent me into a two day panic attack. Reading the massive list of their games and seeing myself over and over was a lot to take on, because there was just.so.much. It made it really hard to keep denying -- though in true Freida fashion I did!
 
I'd like to see that one. Let's get it all out there. (If you're comfortable.)
Here ya go......

Make sure you do some self care first - because it's pretty detailed and many pages long. And every time I read it, I want to puke.

The Criminal Sexual Sadist

This article was originally done in the 90s, then the FBI guys put it out again since, well, it still applies. It turned out to be really helpful for me (eventually... thru a multi-entry rant on my diary LOL), by forcing me to see how I met the definition of one of their victims. It's hard to keep saying something wasn't a big deal when you see the things that were done to you documented in an FBI study. 🥺

Reading this -- seeing what I was truly up against started to finally break up that log jam in my brain that just couldn't accept I wasn't smart/brave/resourceful/insert word here enough to get away. Don't get me wrong - I still struggle. But then I go back and re-read it and think.... WTF?
 
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