"they Had No Other Choice" Mentality

[SuperAnxietyGirl]

How I see it is like this, she holds out the phone to you and you only see that one phone. Well, there are other phones, they are just harder to get to. Which is the case in life, I guess. We do the things we find the easiest and the things we only see in the moment. After the moment, suddenly you'll realize where the other phones were, but in the moment you won't. And even if you did, sometimes you'd just want the easier.

 

[Hashi]

I think it's important to distinguish between physical choice and psychological capability. I find Barconian's example problematic, and your therapist's example too, because they don't seem to separate the two things.

Having been harmed as an adult in a literally captive situation, I can't accept a statement that someone being abused had no choice when they could physically have opened the door and walked away. However, I can accept that psychological impairment kept them from making a different choice, even when other choices were available.

Feeling psychologically unable to leave a situation depends on history and mental, emotional, physical and practical resources. It also depends on ability to go into denial, dissociation and derealisation. This is where I see one of the differences between being literally tied and being psychologically tied. When you're literally tied, dissociation comes as a necessary reaction. When you're psychologically tied, it also plays a part in what choice you make - it enables what you feel is your only option.

I'm not saying the person is to blame for that any more than they're to blame for things like thinking abusive behaviour is normal. But it's necessary to recognise the active part that things like dissociation play, for me at least, because without that it's incomprehensible that someone wouldn't take action in a situation where their children are being hurt.

The difference I'm trying to get at is between being unable (physically) and feeling unable (psychologically) to make a different choice. I don't say being psychologically unable, because I think there are still choices, subconsciously. One of those subconscious choices is to stay numb or unreal. If there weren't subconscious choices then nothing could ever tip the balance and no-one would ever leave an abusive situation that they had been in.

I think it's unhelpful to oversimplify the psychological aspects as having no other choice, because obviously - in a literal sense - there were other options. To me, that doesn't help understanding. Better to represent it as much more complex, which it is.

 

[ill]

I'm not quite sure how to articulate this, but I think feeling psychologically unable or incapable is sometimes or maybe even always being psychologically incapable. Something may be physically possible but psychologically impossible. My mom did not have to harm me (in the physical sense you're using, Hashi), but she was psychologically incapable of not harming me and my father was psychologically incapable of leaving her to help me even though he physically could have. It doesn't excuse what they did and I wasn't destined to be abused, but they weren't capable of being anything other than they were.

I also think it can be easy to overestimate the power or importance of choice. It's not as though my parents made a conscious or even unconscious decision to behave abusively and they should have made the opposite choice - they were just trying to live their lives in the best way they knew how and the byproduct was their abuse of me. I'm not even sure they actively considered how best to live their lives and then chose accordingly; I think it was much more reactionary, as in stress/trigger and learned responses/coping mechanisms and not even the language or ability to view or name those things as such. I guess I imagine them more as beasts caught in a trap lashing out in pain and/or hamsters stuck in a wheel. I don't think they understood that they had options, and if you don't know that you do, maybe you actually don't. (How can you choose an option you don't know exists?)

I keep thinking of my big breakdown and how I felt about it afterwards. For years I fantasized about the different choices I could've, should've made that would've altered things but frankly, I'm not sure those same choices existed at the time of my breakdown, when I didn't even realize I was having a breakdown. Physically, they did, but psychologically, they didn't exist for me. Later, when I had more information and understanding, those options did exist for me (and I beat the shit out of myself for not seeing them at the time) but when I was in the throes of it, they didn't. Hindsight is 20/20 for a reason - because you know things after the fact that you didn't during, like what the results would be.

 

[Definitely..maybe]

The first thing I thought after reading your post was, 'gosh, so my rapist just HAD to rape me in all those moments?'

Honestly, I don't think there's any little excuse for anyone who hurts a child or knowingly lets a child be hurt.

I'm sure your therapist has some reason for it, and I can see where others would be believe in that, but I think you're totally justified in questioning her.

 

[DMerish]

The first thing I thought after reading your post was, 'gosh, so my rapist just HAD to rape me in all those moments?'

D_M,

It's not that he/she HAD to. It is that his or her psychological view was limited. Their perception was skewed: it was myopic - only thinking of getting what they wanted in the moment and didn't consider other possible options due to lack of knowledge, understanding, empathy and not having a conscience. [Don't get me wrong. I'm not defending what your abuser - no way!]

What's being said is that putting in the way of the abuser only having one choice in the moment, and answering "Why did this happen?" provides theoretical reasoning and expands one's view of what happened beyond black and white thinking.

The abuser was under the influence of black and white thinking, i.e. I'm going to do this thing and not think of the consequences. Black and white thinking is also a trap for those of us with PTSD. Black and white thinking maintains what happened shouldn't have; that someone else is to blame for our current state(s) and impedes personal healing.

Finding reason in why the thing happened is not an excuse - it's a method to use (if one chooses to) to gain understanding.

An excuse relieves responsibility. Responsibility being related to the cause, i.e. the person who did the thing. There's a distinction.

It's kind of tricky to explain and I don't know if I did it very well :unsure:

 

[Definitely..maybe]

You explained it perfectly, and believe it or not- it helps! When I can put some sort of reasoning to it, it really does help.

Thank you for explaining:)

 

[Tolkienian]

I have a really hard time believing that we don't have choices because I've chosen differently from my abuser. He was hurt, he was taught to abuse, and he lashed out and abused me. That was a choice, even then--if only because I was hurt, I was taught to abuse, and yet I, at the same age, did not lash out and hurt others.

(I think this is not quite what the posts so far are saying, but I really don't understand the idea...of course we choose what seems like the best option at the time. But we're still responsible for hurting other people with our choices.)

 

[Madhather]

DMerish, thank you. You have given me something to think about.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

It's threads like these that remind me why I hate philosophy so much...

 

[maryiscontrary]

My therapist also states that people are doing "best" at their given moment. Personally, I have seen the opposite of this, and I brought it up to him, but he still insists. Personally, I think people who make perpetual bad choices are lazy, and mentally infantile.

 

[Barconian]

Personally, I think people who make perpetual bad choices are lazy, and mentally infantile.

I think I don't agree

 

[maryiscontrary]

Why? If bad choices are bringing bad results, and a human being is made by nature to be a feedback machine, then ignoring feedback is not honoring one's nature. In the wild, if an animal does not adjust and respond to feedback in nature, they are dead. When I decided to take responsibility and do this, I ceased being a baby, and became a grown up.

Why don't you agree?