Trouble With Friendships

[BlueWeepingRose]

I don't hate any of my friends at all. In fact I love them so much and I'll do anything for them. Love helping them out anytime they need it because I'm a compassionate person at heart and I hate the suffering of others because I was a victim of abuse more than once. Sometimes though I feel like others simply don't care what I've been through. I know they do deep down. However anytime I'm angry and when I'm simply not thinking straight at all and I end up getting angry and sad at the same time. Sometimes I feel like I'm a burden on them and that their tired of me going on about my abuse. So right now I feel like "nobody cares."

I always help other people out with their problems. When it comes to me: they simply don't know what to say and this kinda upsets me. Once someone asked me, "What do you expect from people?" I don't expect people to do anything for me. All I want is nothing but support and I simply don't get it from that many people at all. Every single day I have memories of me getting abused and I end up crying really hard. Than once I open up they don't know what to say and I can understand that because they haven't been through it. Right now I'm reaching out and I'm fearing once again in the end nobody will respond and my feelings will go unnoticed. My abuser didn't care about my feelings either and he told me so many times that nobody cared about me. Anytime someone doesn't know what to say to me or support me in some way I hear his voice in his head saying, "See....I told you nobody cared about you. Only I care about you."

It makes me sad how nobody supports me on this. I feel so alone. Not even my family supports me and doesn't know what to say. Once again as of right now I'm feeling like nobody cares about me. I have his voice in my head saying it over and over again. "I told you nobody cared about you. Only I do. Nobody else can put up with your s___. Only me."

Right now I'm not talking to any of my friends because of this. I feel sad, angry and lonely right now.

 

[hodge]

I care, @BlueWeepingRose, and I'm sure others here will, too.

I've learned to rarely talk about my abuse with my friends, because, you're right, they don't know how to handle it. That's why this is such a great place. Everyone here gets it. All the awful symptoms, the memories/flashbacks/intrusive thoughts. The struggles in therapy. All of it.

 

[EveHarrington]

Do you expect your friends and family to be mind readers and always know exactly the right thing to say?

I think you're confusing "caring" with "knowing the right thing to say".

These things can be very different.

MANY users/abusers know EXACTLY the right thing to say but they only say it to get what they want. These types of people don't care about you in the least.

On the other hand, many people who care don't know the right thing to say when told something so serious.

Maybe you should take a different approach and actively ask people for what you need from them.

 

[Chem Lady]

I totally understand what you are saying, Blue Weeping Rose. I feel the same way. I have finally become quite selective in who I have in my community. Because I have no family support, it's important to me to have some friends around who are capable of caring about me, even if they can't grasp how difficult the abuse was and how it pervades my every day of living.
I agree with you that being compassionate is important and good. It has been very difficult to not see that same compassion come back to me from many people.
I'm sorry you are feeling very down about it today. Some days are just tougher and lonelier than others. Please know that I understand and am caring about you today.

 

[Justmehere]

@BlueWeepingRose -

When it comes to me: they simply don't know what to say and this kinda upsets me.

I can relate with your struggle. Having PTSD and getting through it with support means we have to do so much work to hold together relationships... and you are SO right. So often people just don't know.

Trauma is traumatic partly because it is abnormal. People who don't know what to say are usually scared or uneasy or they haven't been through it themselves.... or no one showed them how. No one told them.

My mother has been through horrible trauma. I reached out to her in a desperate moment a few years ago and I asked her if she could listen. Her respond was to start making angry demands that I fix the problem and everything and then she slipped into talking about her own trauma, and she almost never does that... I asked her if anyone had been there to listen to her, and she said no. Somehow this moment struck me as the moment where I began to understand she didn't know how to handle her own stuff, and no one has taught her how to help others too.

And the thing is, sometimes the more someone cares about a soul, the more some people shut down when that person is in distress. I have a friend who went through cancer and 3 of her 4 sisters all bailed on her. They were so upset about her having cancer and being in pain, they deeply struggled to be present with her in it. I have asked around and found that this is actually too common.

Once someone asked me, "What do you expect from people?" I don't expect people to do anything for me. All I want is nothing but support and I simply don't get it from that many people at all. Every single day I have memories of me getting abused and I end up crying really hard. Than once I open up they don't know what to say and I can understand that because they haven't been through it. Right now I'm reaching out and I'm fearing once again in the end nobody will respond and my feelings will go unnoticed. My abuser didn't care about my feelings either and he told me so many times that nobody cared about me. Anytime someone doesn't know what to say to me or support me in some way I hear his voice in his head saying, "See....I told you nobody cared about you. Only I care about you."

First step, you have to find the courage to begin to disagree with him. He was wrong and no matter what clueless friends fail to do, your abuser was wrong. How do I know? He is an abuser. They are pretty much wrong about people by definition. So start off by remembering that YOU are not an abuser so you therefore do not agree with abusers.

With your friends, define for them what "support" means. @EveHarrington is right. You may even have to teach them a bit what would be support for you. Just because you do it for them is not ground for them to know you want the same back. I know it might feel obvious and many of us can fall into "mindreading" habits (I do it) where we have an expectation for support but don't tell people what that means, and then get disappointed when no one is there. I found it most effective to tell a few people, when I get panicky, "can you be one of the people I call to see if you can go for a walk with me?" If I tell someone "when I have symptoms, can you be a support" - they tend to be confused and uneasy, because they don't know what that means. But when I ask for the more specific request, more people say "sure!" and then I get more support.

It's wonderful you want to talk about what you have been though and want people to be there for you. Maybe asking people to go grab tea and listen for a bit might help, if you tell them you just need them to listen. As a balance, keep in mind that your friends can be friends, but be careful to not turn them into therapists, and people to pour all the trauma stories on to. Trauma therapists have to do a lot of work on their own to not have secondary traumatization from dealing with trauma stories and friends sometimes can even have a harder time with it. Something that I find helps my supporters be able to be there to support me more is to mention, "I'm in therapy, so I don't need you to be my therapisty friend, but I could really sue someone to talk to and to listen for a bit right now." Keep sharing, but if someone shuts down, know that it's about them and their ability to cope. Not about you and how much you deserve the support you need and deserve.

And some people, well, they just plain stink at being supporters and most people struggle to know what to say. It's so so so hard. Suffering through trauma can be so uber isolating. Keep reaching out and seeking out those gems of friends who really can be there for you, and tell them what is good support for you and what that looks like.