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All amazing points and so important to take in. I think I have done a couple of these, but not habitually or intensely. But it's good awareness for me.

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When you grow up in abuse, first part of your life you have to pretend everything is fine and you're not in pain at all and this is normal and you're good, so your abusers can keep their secrets and not be outed as abusers (because your life is on the line and if you talk and they find out, consequences could be fatal). But then when you manage to get out of it and go out there and live in the world, you believe you'll finally get the chance to get the truth out there, to act true to your feelings and to say what you went through and for it to matter! You want a humanizing experience, you're no longer shackled by threats of abuse if you speak out and you want the truth to be out there, you want your experiences acknowledged!

And it turns out, nope, everyone still wants you to keep it down and act normal or you're not a part of society and you will still be ostracized if you say what happened because people prefer pretending it doesn't happen and they don't wanna hear about it.

First you have to act normal to protect yourself, then you have to act normal to protect everyone else. There is no way to live true to your feelings and experiences.

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Abusive parents will convince you that you're 'too old to be cared for' from the second you can understand words. Normal parents will not consider their children too old to care for even when they're 50.

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Abusive parents can sometimes create the 'us versus them' mentality inside of their family, where they convince you that anyone who isn't raising their child the exact way they are, is stupid, ignorant, spoiling their children and making selfish brats out of them.

They also convince you that the world inside of their house, and the world outside, are to different worlds, and only the outside is 'the real world', and it's a place you, according to them, know nothing about, and would never survive in. Outside world is at the same time filled with dangerous individuals, who would hurt you (unlike your parents, who also hurt you, but those outsiders would hurt you worse, apparently), and filled with stupid people who know nothing and are to be insulted and humiliated (abusive parents will often degrade homeless people, minorities, addicts and anyone they deem less worthy, and you'll be stuck in feeling like at least you're not them, but at the same time scared you'll become them, and then you'll be degraded just like that as well.)

In this 'us versus them' situation, your parents are the smartest, the only ones who know what the 'correct way to live is', and the 'correct way to raise children'. They'll tell you how you're supposed to think, behave, speak and act. Their words are the highest truth and not to be questioned or criticized; any criticism will be met with hostility and attacks, and insisting that any other way of thinking would convert them to the 'non desirables' (see above about the minorities and homeless people).

And the thing is, this is a tactic that cults use to make people unable to leave. Convincing people that the thinking and methods inside are vastly superior and better, that anyone outside who doesn't follow their methods is stupid, tainted, incapable of normal life, and that people outside are simultaneously stupid and wrong, but also dangerous, hateful, capable of doing intense harm to you, that's how the cults terrify people into belief that they can never live outside. That it's both dangerous and wrong to even want to.

If you feel scared and incredibly anxious of living outside of your parent's home, and your parents have encouraged you to believe those things, you've been exposed to cult-level manipulation to prevent your escape.

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Do you ever experience stress so long term, that when it gets released, you struggle to function without it?

Your body is washed with relief but it's so intense it actually hurts; you can't breathe, your limbs go limp, you can't force yourself to do anything anymore, you need to lie down, you can't get up, and you can't focus. It's almost like you go from stress right to grief, there is no time for joy, the waves that hit make you feel that you were suffering for so long, that it was so awful it forced your body on edge for weeks or months, you can finally acknowledge how bad it was, now that you survived it. The release of suffering is so painful it makes an actual negative impact.

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Somewhere along the lines, the abusers convinced the society at large that tolerating, forgiving and defending abuse is a moral virtue. That in order to be a good person, you must excuse vile actions of abuse, you must find rationalizations for it, you must take the abuser's point of view, you must feel sorry for them, you must forgive them, and you must push others to do the same. Otherwise it would be 'a world where people would take revenge on the abusers and be just as bad', or whatever other bullshit fear-mongering they're spreading around.

No, it is not a moral virtue to tolerate or forgive abuse. No, the victims would not go on a revenge campaigns if they were not silenced and told to get over it. No, the society would not descend into chaos if we forced people to take responsibility for actions of abuse towards their immediately family and loved ones. And no, pushing victims to forgive and accept abusers, is not an act of moral virtue. It is an act of evil.

All that this accomplishes is more abuse, more frequent abuse, more freedom to abuse, and more isolation and helplessness for the victims. Which is exactly what the abusers want.

The only moral action is to stand up to the abuse and to stand with the victims. If you can't do this much, you can cowardly withdraw. Siding with abusers, defending them and degrading victims for their 'lack of morality' for not forgiving the abusers, is the act of cruelty and viciousness. You are gloating your virtue on the site of a wounded, devastated person. Be ashamed of yourself.

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abusers: You'd never survive out there. You wouldn't be able to even feed yourself without us. You're too stupid and too clumsy and too naive to make it. You'd be dead in a ditch within a week. You're incapable of independence and you're only alive because we keep you alive.

abusers: We're going to kick you out! You owe us for keeping you alive! You're eating our food! You'll do what you're told while you're living under our roof!

(these two scenarios together imply a death threat; they're coercing you into doing things against your will or you're threatened with dying on the street, meaning these people convince you that you'll be dead if you disobey them, or outright telling you they'd rather have you dead than free.)

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'Aw but don't you feel sorry for your abuser' 'oh maybe they've been abused themselves, you have to think about that!' 'but maybe they're only doing it because they have a mental illness! You have to look at it from their perspective!'

DON'T YOU THINK MY PRIORITY SHOULD BE TO GET AWAY FROM ABUSE WHILE I'M STILL ALIVE?

Also, why are you immediately putting yourself in the shoes of my abuser but not me? Do you feel it's more likely you'd be abuser in that situation, rather than the abused? Do you think this situation requires some virtue signaling and boasting about how you'd be a 'more compassionate' victim? Are you here to help them abuse me? Are you here to make sure it keeps continuing? Do you think anyone with a mental illness should have free reign to abuse me, or you? Do you think people threatened by a predator need to be running away or stopping to see how the predator would feel about it?

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every resource ever: you need to learn to deal with conflict and not run away from it

me in a conflict: I have already lost control of myself because my body thinks we're about to die and freeze/fawn/flight response had already taken over, I am shaking and I can't control my words, and I will now take 2 months recovery and that is IF I actually get out of this alive

#starting to understand why regular advice doesn't help...

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child: is sick, hurt or injured

abusive parent: and you did that on PURPOSE to make ME miserable! Your every move is a cunning manipulation to make me feel bad! You do this to make me suffer! You never think of anyone but yourself, are you happy now? Are you happy now that I'm miserable?? This is what YOU wanted!

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abusive parents when you show signs of a silent struggle: This is because you never tell us anything!!!!

abusive parents when you tell them something: Stop making shit up! You're dramatizing! Start living in the real world! Nobody cares! Get over yourself, you're pathetic! Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about! You're faking it for attention! I'm busy stop bothering me! Why do I always have to have trouble with you! This is your fault! This is because you did x and y! You did this on purpose to spite us! Why can't you just act normal like everyone else!

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abusers will go 'it makes me feel sooo upset when you live your life the way you want to and do the things you want to do, actually what you're doing is victimizing me by not existing only as a support and validation to me you are so abusive and selfish and you should think more about how your sense of freedom and boundaries is negatively effecting me'

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abusers will go 'it makes me feel sooo upset when you live your life the way you want to and do the things you want to do, actually what you're doing is victimizing me by not existing only as a support and validation to me you are so abusive and selfish and you should think more about how your sense of freedom and boundaries is negatively effecting me'

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