Minimisation

[Abstract]

Thanks Melissa, Zaniera and Murakami!

Abstract, I self abuse savagely through minimisation, right down to the language I use, both internally and externally, to describe my life and challenges. It's a particularly vicious form of self mockery sometimes, and often when I do it, I feel a little not quite myself and realise that my language is beginning to take on the tone and style of either or both of my parents.

MD,
Thank you, thank you, thank you.

That expresses it perfectly. Thank you also for validating invalidation. I hate that I have such bad invalidation "wounds" and judge myself severely for it. Ashamed.

This thing in my head sounds just like my mother and father.

I have thought that if it was not for this one thing - abusive self invalidation - my progress with everything would speed up and I would be at least three times further than I am.

I might be wrong but it seems to me that the amount of the pure abusive minimising varies with people so that for some it is more purely a means of making the trauma less frightening. ?

I wish I could be as open as some have been on here about the minimising of trauma but the truth is that I am too deep in to do so.

If I said more then I would be implying that it is not nothing and I can't do that. It would also set off the abusive invalidating backlash in my head. So I can't even talk properly about the minimising because of minimising.

I read something once about how minimising and denial can start off as a means of coping but how for some who have done it for a particularly long time or where it sticks for some reason, it turns into something far more sinister. It degenerates into intense self hatred and self abuse. I felt it described me perfectly.

 

[maddog]

Like most maladaptive symptoms, minimisation most definitely served an adaptive and self-preserving purpose once upon a time. In some ways, it's like a form of dissociation - dissociation from the reality of emotional impact, and so during periods of active abuse, to minimise what was happening was to minimise its impact and to maximise coping and survival.

Sad, so sad, that we can't just tell our brains that those days are over now and have them switch channels into some sort of pre-programmed functional state. the problem is that it's not pre-programmed.

Maddog