Why?

[Deleted member 541]

Why is it that so many abuse victims have guilt related to their trauma?

Why is it that so many abuse victims have shame related to their trauma?

Why is it that so many abuse victims have self impossed blame?

I went through this myself and I see it over and over again with people on this site. I just don't get why the VICTIMS end up with all of this, when clearly we are not responsible. For me, overcoming the blame, guilt, and shame was some of the hardest things to overcome, therefore it made my healing so much harder.

So WHY do abuse victims feel these things, and are there ways to get around them or ways to help us FASTER to understand it wasn't our fault????

I hope I'm making some sense here, this is just very hard for me to put into comprehensive wording, because it's such a sticking point for me. I know what I went through to get this crap through my head, and it's so hard when I read others stories and see the suffering they deal with, with shame, guilt and self blaming.

 

[rosey]

psychological childhood development comes into play on this. children are very self focused and will always look to themselves first. it is that simple really the bigger the issue the more affect the self blame will have in the longer term.

 

[Deleted member 541]

@rosey while I understand what you are saying(on some level with my pea brain) it's not just with childhood abuse. I have seen this with adults also. Such as women that have been raped or suffered abuse within a relationship or marriage.

 

[tinac21]

I think for me it has always been that I tell myself there was something I could have done to prevent the abuse. If I had been a good girl, or if I didn't wear a certain thing or behave a certain way then these things wouldn't have happened. As a child, and the eldest sibling out of 3, if my brothers were in trouble I jumped in the way and took the beating or stopped it. As I got older I became their mother, by the time I was 10 they called me mom. I took on the entire burden of their lives, their safety over my own. As adults, we still have this dynamic as siblings and there are moments when I have a flashback to when I couldn't save them from my mom or step parents and the guilt is earth shattering. I wanted to give them a better life. They were no longer my brothers, but my children. I still have a difficult time separating the two. Giving them their space, not being a crazy overbearing mom/sister. Even now, they are in their twenty's and living some pretty destructive lives and I feel like its my fault. One of them's repeating the abuse with his own children, and turning to drugs/drinking. The other is slowly coming around from years of drug abuse. No matter how many times I tell myself I didn't do this, they are adults now, I was only a child then... blah blah blah. It doesn't change the fact that I feel in some huge way I failed them. I failed me. I'm the reason for the abuse. At some point I feel like it was my doing completely. I wish I knew the reason why. Its almost me abusing my own self for sh*t I didn't do. My therapist says its cycling, whatever that means.

 

[rosey]

@rosey while I understand what you are saying(on some level with my pea brain) it's...

@She Cat you are very right. adults not exempt from this my pea brain also doenst work that far but I assume that it is a similar process. whilst some people always blame others some people always blame themselves very rarely have a person able to balance them both.

the whole blame thing breaks my heart because i think we have all been through enough without blaming our selfs on top

 

[honeycomb]

You asked, Why do abuse victims feel at fault and shame? What a great question! I can answer for myself.
I was actually in complete denial about guilt or shame. The first time a therapist suggested that I might feel guilty and that it was my fault, I was OUTRAGED. I left the office. Nobody was going to put that on me! But in reality, the therapist had struck a nerve. I left that office because I did feel those things. It took me 10 years to get to those feelings. I was a kid when a lot of my abuse happened between my brother and I. I was molested and forced to perform sexual acts for him. If I didn't I would get hit, or have my arm bent to the breaking point. I'd lock myself in the bathroom and he would pick the lock..........this went on from age 11 to 16. I finally realized that I did feel guilty because I didn't always fight back. I didn't want to get hurt. He also always said that I was a tease or "you know you want it" over and over.......Those sayings got internalized. I was also a kid, what did I know about sex? So I was curious. That caused me to feel responsible. Sometimes my body liked what was happening too. That was hard to own! When I finally realized all of this, I realized that I WAS NOT guilty or responsible. It was never my idea. I did not want "IT" and that I was never protected. My mom knew about it but she was a nut case and said that I was lying. I would get hit for telling on my brother. SO.............there you have it. That is why I felt guilty for a long time UNTIL, I finally realized that I was just a kid. It wasn't my fault. I loved my brother and he used me and abused me. My mom constantly abused me physically and emotionally.
Later, in the Navy, I was gang raped. I thought that was my fault. I felt that I had put myself in a stupid situation. I was on a date that turned into date rape and then gang rape with 2 of his friends. I had gone to one of their rooms and had a drink with them after my date. I wound up in a brutal situation. At that point I had not resolved my childhood abuse issues, consequently, I was still in the self blame mode without even realizing it. Earlier that year, I was also molested by a corpsman when I was in the hospital for a pulmonary embolism. I had allowed myself to be internally massaged to break up my blood clot.(the corpman said that it was part of my treatment) I was young and naïve about such things. It wasn't until I went through nursing school years after the fact that I realized he had been lying. Girl, did I Feel VIOLATED then! In all these instances, I finally realize that none of it was my fault. I had been conditioned to take on blame. So I say it is because of conditioning that we feel at fault and the shame follows.

 

[honeycomb]

We are the only ones that can let go of the guilt feelings and shame/blame game once we ACCEPT in our mind that it truly wasn't our fault. I had a conversation with my partner about me not having a higher power and that some things I could not just let go of. My partner said that my higher power has been my inner child.
That was a big AHA! moment for me. My inner child had been running my whole life without me even realizing it. I had made her my higher power......the results were/are disastrous! What the heck does a kid know? Anyway, my new challenge is to take charge of my life as the ADULT part of myself. I have yet to integrate the two aspects of myself but at least I am more aware of the issue now. I am 59 years old and I still haven't grown up. AHhhhh what a life! ugh.

 

[Deleted member 541]

@honeycomb OMG, your story mirrors mine to the point that it was a bit weird reading it. I too was molested by both of my brothers, actually one of them raped me. Of course he claims it was mutual and I consented. If he thinks laying there froze with fear was consent, well ok then that's on him. I did not give my consent.

I too was gang raped after going to a college party, had one too many drinks and they took advantage of me. I was only a teenager of 15 or 16 at the time. Yes, I was beaten and abused by my mother and grandmother.

It took me yrs too, to unravel all of this and to finally free myself of the guilt, blame, and shame. I guess I still don't understand WHY we take on all of this shit. Maybe I never will either. It just makes me so sad for those that do it, and they really don't need to. I just wish that there was a way for that ahh ha moment, or lightbulb moment to happen for them, so they didn't have to suffer additional pain and torture for things they haven't done.... Just extremely sad to see it happen over and over.

 

[lostforgottensoul]

Like my therapist said yesterday (in my case), my mommy was by default "good" as mommies are good. Its what we believe as very young children. Mommies keep us safe & protect us and mommies are good.

Id say we believe the same about Daddies though Daddies are super heros that "save the day".

Then something not good, something bad and horrible happens. Something mommy and daddy didnt protect us from and suddening there's a delmmia, believe mommy and daddy arent good or believe we arent and we caused it and are to blame to keep mommy and daddy good.

A child has a unique way of making everything wrong in the world their fault. I think its the same mindset, a bit, we want to believe everyone is good and we end up the bad one. So the "creepy" neighbor becomes a "nice guy" and/or a "fun" guy. Our "creepy" uncle is the same.

Its just how a child's mind works.

Now a victim as an adult of a crime. I think we as humans play "what ifs" a ton so it becomes our fault because "what if i didnt walk down that alley" "what if i had ran" "what if I had faught" "what if i had screamed" "what if i had told". We some how make it our fault. This time not because the other has to be good but because we could have done better.

Not sure if any of that makes sense. It makes sense in my head but not doing a great job of typing it.

 

[VioletButterfly]

@honeycomb - I want to :hug: both of your posts. I can very much relate and found your second post most interesting and enlightening. What an interesting paradigm having your young self being your higher power and running your life. I'm going to have to give this some thought as I've come to the conclusion that fear runs my life, but fear was first instilled while I was a little girl. Definitely worth some work. Tks. VB

 

[Nevermore]

I have often wondered this too, and because my feelings of guilt and shame were so strong I wondered if I really had caused it all and secretly knew that but wasn't wanting to own up to it all being my fault.
I'm further down the line now and can see how wrong that is to think you are somehow responsible for the actions of others.
I saw something on tv the other night that both broke my heart and also spoke to the core of why the guilt and shame.
A predator who grabbed a young boy off the street said after he grabbed the kid while holding a gun and telling his friends to run, the kid asked "What did I do wrong?"
That is still breaking my heart );
I think that feeling speaks a bit of innocence, of not being able to understand why someone would hurt you if you hadn't done something to cause it.
Adults too can feel that way. I know I did. And it was awful to come to the realisation that someone actually set out and meant to hurt you - for no reason at all except they wanted to

 

[ladee]

For so many of us who never had a protector or an advocate to help us when we were being abused, those feelings have no where to go. We have to internalize it. As there is no me around to help us understand any of it. If we are constantly crticized, made fun of, called names, then after awhile it becomes our
truth.
Kids that are told and shown they are worthwhile and are valued grow up believing that because that became their truth.
We had no experiences in the world to compare it to. So we believed what was said and done to us was our fault.
There is healthy shamen we know we should not have hit the dog because it is a defensless creature.
Then there is toxic
shame saying we hit the dog because we are justrotten humans.
So much of our recovery is based on those two things, shame and guilt. My hardest work has been on this.