Enoughdonegone - It's Not Fine.

The next step.

So what’s next? You heal. You grow. And you help others.

Abusive parents will keep you feeling like you always have to fight to prove yourself. Any single thing you do can become a proof that you’re worthless and be an excuse for humiliation and baseless attacks, even if you do it perfectly, they will go on and nitpick and go against reason to find something wrong with it.

Another tactics they like to use is moving goalposts, meaning they will berate you saying you’ll never be able to achieve something, and once you do, well then it doesn’t matter anymore! Suddenly this thing you were supposed to be too stupid to achieve is a minor and perfectly achiveable goalpost and you’re forced to feel bad you didn’t achieve some other thing! You get nastily compared to someone else who had nothing to do with it, and you’re left feeling as if all that effort you put in to prove your worth, was for nothing, because it’s meaningless now. Also, as soon as you prove one thing they were wrong about you, they will find 10 other things you have to prove, right there on the spot. It doesn’t matter if you did something good yesterday, can you do it right this second? Can you prove you’re not going to fail something else in next 5 years? You can’t. Nobody can. It’s not a game of determination of your worth, it’s a game of diverting from your srengths, diverting from your accomplishments and pushing you into seeing nothing but flaws and weaknesses in yourself, and imaginary ones at that. No person on earth can live proving themselves every second of their lives, it’s inhumane to demand it. Nobody deserves to be attacked over their worth by their very loved ones, who are supposed to value you no matter what you are, or aren’t capable of achieving.

They do this to keep you in the constant loop of feeling desperate, incapable, not good enough for anything, and thus never realizing you’re in fact, smarter, more sane, and more decent human being than they will ever be. They wouldn’t be doing this if your achivements and abilities weren’t a threat to them, if it didn’t bug them so much that you can do things better, more efficient and with more common sense they could ever hope to gather. They’re watching you thru eyes of jealousy and desire to destroy your capability – even if they have to traumatize you to do it. Nobody should be forced to see themselves thru their eyes. Even they know they’re lying when they’re acting like they couldn’t be less impressed with you.

I wrote this post in the early weeks of freedom. Nearly three years later I'm still discovering new impacts of the damage.

Rinse, repeat.  Rinse, repeat.

I have started writing a number of my posts with “The worst thing about an abusive relationship is….” and then having to erase it because it isn’t true.  I can’t call this particular aspect or experience the worst thing.  It’s all the worst thing.

Who would I be if I had broken up with him the first time he cheated on me?  Fifteen years later I can barely tell you who I was before I met him.

Because traumatized people often have trouble sensing what is going on in their bodies, they lack a nuanced response to frustration. They either react to stress by becoming “spaced out” or with excessive anger. Whatever their response, they often can’t tell what is upsetting them. This failure to be in touch with their bodies contributes to their well-documented lack of self-protection and high rates of revictimization and also to their remarkable difficulties feeling pleasure, sensuality, and having a sense of meaning.

“The Body Keeps The Score” by Bessel van der Kolk