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Thinking you could have saved yourself from csa

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made me a runner s
A runner.

SI.

Is running.

But what my cognitive distortion is about is RESPONSIBILITY. Do you have a part that says, “This wouldn’t have happened if I did something?”

For me… as an infant… my something is *rolling over*. If. I. Had rolled over. I could have avoided…

So for me. Rolling over. Is. Running away. So that. Is what we have in common. Running.

Flowing. We flow: away. We are flowers.
 
Do you have a part that says, “This wouldn’t have happened if I did something?”
Yep.
If I hadn't gone to the party
If I hadn't opened the door
If I hadn't let my guard down
and on and on and on

A baby can't make a choice
You never had a choice
The choice belonged to someone who was evil
And he used his choice to harm you.

The minute HE decided he was going to harm you
was the minute you couldn't prevent - no matter what you did
 
You never had a choice
The choice belonged to someone who was evil
And he used his choice to harm you.
I see it much more clearly now. Whatever part is present right now (it’s my adult work part who just got home), agrees with you in a very easy way. And is somewhat confused about how this could have ever been an issue:

Which gets at the notion of parts nicely: it is clearly a child part that believes she could have saved us. No adult sees that as possible.

@Freida I have a question for you and you don’t have to answer. The points you made beg the question… if those apply to me do they not apply to you? I don’t mean for this to become a comparison but I’m trying to understand this on a fundamental psychological level… assuming there is such a thing.

On the one hand… I can agree with you and say, “My age precluded choice, everyone knows that a baby is utterly dependent on caregivers and if a caregiver breaches that responsibility by seeking gratification through the discomfort of the baby their choices will make the baby a victim and change the course of both their lives.”

So far so good.

But the concept of victimization is a tricky one, especially in the context of modern psychology and the idea of “the individual.” To be an agent of change an individual must develop a sense of freedom, to a certain degree: to believe that one’s sense of freedom is removed by another individual or by the culture that one lives in is a difficult prospect.

I wonder if the culture encourages victimization or heroic individuation? Or both?

I suspect that the culture encourages an impossible combination of the two.

To be a true victim a person must have no choice in the matter: why is victimization avoided if it gives one a “get out of jail free card”? Because of the implications of the consequences of victim hood. Loss of agency. Helplessness: PTSD symptoms! If I weren’t a victim I wouldn’t have to deal with these symptoms.

So I’m back to the point of two opposing points (victim vs agent) and what is the synthesis? What is the negation of the negation, as Hegel would say?

Thesis: Victim (or not victim)

Antithesis: Agent (or loss of agency)

Synthesis: Depends on the part fronting
 
I talked with a friend yesterday and brought this up, said it out loud. Saying it out loud helps a lot with seeing it for what it is. My conclusion is that I will have this cognitive distortion when my child parts are in charge. So if I am having this cognitive distortion it is a good indicator that I’m in a regressed state. If I can recognize that I might be able to realize that this thought does not have any adult rationality behind it. I might be able to recognize that my child parts are not always in charge.
 
To be a true victim a person must have no choice in the matter: why is victimization avoided if it gives one a “get out of jail free card”?
Because people don't realize being a victim is a single event and there is a start and an end. Are you a victim of everything that happens to you? No, you just fit the definition of a victim - a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event, meaning its in the moment the event happens you are a victim. So, if you are not involved in an accident etc at this moment that means you WERE a victim of an event, but you are not a victim in this moment.

Most people associate victims with schoolyard bullies and weakness. But its not weakness. It describes your part in the event, and it ends there. It doesn't go on and on. But most people think once you are a victim it puts you in the class of always being a victim.

Woulda shoulda coulda seems to me a form of dissociative fantasy where we apply today and what we know today to yesterday to try to "fix" the memory and avoid or change our perception of the reality of the memory.
 
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I haven’t read all the replies so forgive me if it’s been said already, but I think maybe those thoughts give some illusion of control? Whereas in reality you had none, and that is a really frightening feeling.
I do this a bit too, or hold myself accountable somehow for things I too had no control over. In some weird way, it comforted me, but when I understood what I was doing there, the grief was enormous. I couldn’t get my head around the betrayal. Didn’t want to believe I’d been so betrayed and it was done purposefully. It took a long long time to accept that horrible truth. ):
 
. The points you made beg the question… if those apply to me do they not apply to you? I don’t mean for this to become a comparison but I’m trying to understand this on a fundamental psychological level… assuming there is such a thing.
yep they do
And yep -- I still struggle with it today. It's the part I need to get past if I'm going to heal -- that I was a victim. But if I say "victim" I apply a sense of total helplessness to myself.
And even though that is true, I Just.Cant.Accept. It.

I'm far enough along in therapy to understand how unrealistic that statement is - that somehow I should have been ...smarter, braver, stronger, you name it. And I wasn't. So it must be my fault.

Then I come here and I can so easily see how people blame themselves for things that happened that obviously weren't their fault.
And I tell them so.
Because it's true.
For them.

This is what bestie nailed me on a while ago. She said if I think of it like this then I am discounting all the suffering others experienced by thinking that I am so much "more" than they are, because it was my fault I couldn't stop my traumas from happening.

Because.
If it applies to them it applies to me.

When I can say it and MEAN it, I will be on a path to true healing
Just like you 🫂

No, you just fit the definition of a victim - a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event, meaning its in the moment the event happens you are a victim. So, if you are not involved in an accident etc at this moment that means you WERE a victim of an event, but you are not a victim in this moment.
This this this a thousand times this!
 
That sounds real progress @OliveJewel . A breakthrough?
Am starting to think it is a breakthrough.
When I can say it and MEAN it, I will be on a path to true healing
Thank you @Freida for the encouragement. I appreciate this point particularly because I hadn’t thought about how difficult it is to MEAN what I say when it comes to the coping and hope and healing. It taps into the idea of imposter syndrome.
 
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