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#147320 - 06/21/08 05:37 AM Re: Support the Survivor (of DV or SA) [Re: DJ]
gims Offline
Member

Registered: 01/16/07
Posts: 3404
Loc: USA
Sorry about all the separate posts, but I'm responding as I'm reading the thread....

Quote:

So...Edelweiss, see, I told my mom, but I'm not sure if in the end it made things better or worse for me. I used to tell this story at slumber parties sometimes because I was trying to process it all. Oh, and after that, I always wore shorts under my dress.


My word... and out in the open! I wish you had smacked it a good one, DJ!!!!!

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#147321 - 06/22/08 01:53 AM Re: Support the Survivor (of DV or SA) [Re: gims]
DJ Offline
Member

Registered: 11/22/02
Posts: 1149
Loc: Ohio
Yeah. Except I was a little kid and it was right in my face. I thought it was fake.
_________________________
http://dcvance.wordpress.com/

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#147322 - 06/22/08 02:14 AM Re: Support the Survivor (of DV or SA) [Re: DJ]
Anonymous
Unregistered


Gims, I agree, it is difficult to live in the here and now . . . ghost lurk in the cobwebs of my mind.

Such a trauma is like a barbed wire fence, you can see through it, yet getting through it is another thing altogether.

My abusers (uncles, ex-husband, prior supervisor) live as if nothing happened and got promoted and have more money than they need. It's debilitating for the victim or 'survivor'.

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#147323 - 07/23/08 01:19 AM Re: Support the Survivor (of DV or SA) [Re: ]
BreathingAgain Offline


Registered: 07/23/08
Posts: 2
As a survivor of a verbally and physically abusive relationship, I completely agree with the original sentiment of this thread. I finally left my ex-husband after he physically assaulted our (then) 6 year old daughter and me. If I knew what I know now, I would have left far sooner for the verbal and emotional abuse. As far as long term results; the verbal and emotional abuses were far more damaging to my children and me than the physical.
It is important to be really understanding with a friend who has been in this situation. I, for example, had a really hard time asking for help after I left because every time I asked my ex for help, I ended up getting hurt (either physically, or emotionally with a tirade about my inadequacies as a human being). My Father and Mother, in particular, commented frequently about my inability to just simply say when I needed help. I was so conditioned to NOT ask for help, because I didn’t want to pay the consequences.

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#147324 - 07/23/08 12:06 PM Re: Support the Survivor (of DV or SA) [Re: BreathingAgain]
Eagle Heart Offline
Member

Registered: 03/22/05
Posts: 4876
Loc: Canada
Breathing Again, welcome to BWS. I'm glad you found us. And I'm glad you are out of that situation. Many people can't see the scars of emotional abuse and therefore can't understand the long-term ramifications and mangled thinking processes that an emotionally abused child/person goes through. I'm currently undergoing intensive therapy to heal the damage wrought by years of verbal/emotional abuse when I was a young child. While physical abuse leaves scars, verbal and emotional abuse leave invisible and insidious wounds that don't show up on any x-ray, but do leak out all over the place in social interactions and interpretation processes.

I'm glad you're able to ask for help. And this is a great (and usually safe) place to come and rest your soul and find people who DO understand and care.
_________________________
When you don't like a thing, change it.
If you can't change it, change the way you think about it.

(Maya Angelou)

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#147325 - 07/24/08 02:19 AM Re: Support the Survivor (of DV or SA) [Re: Eagle Heart]
Happy Birthday Princess Lenora Offline
Member

Registered: 11/11/04
Posts: 3503
Loc: Colorado
Well, I have been remiss. I have been missing. I dropped out for a while, not realizing that there was important work being done at BWS. Mustang, that's so true about trauma being like a barbed wire fence. DJ, what a scarey situation for you. It's understandable that you would think it was a fake, because who would do such a thing for real? Gims, I am concerned about what you are thinking in terms of not talking about things. I'm sorry, but I guess I don't understand. Breathing Again, I'm sorry for what you and your daughter experienced. 6 years old! I think what you are describing is called "learned helplessness." We lose our power to abusers. Abusers let us think that we are nothing without them, or nothing period. We are conditioned to not ask for help. You know, I never quite understood the phrase: "They did the best they could with what they had and knew at the time." In some ways I think that is true of my mother. But I can't understand that in terms of my father and step father. I mean, the best they could do was beat, berate, and belittle? For my own good? Because they LOVED me? Eagle, I have read your book and your posts for years, and not until your post above did I understand that you suffered from verbal/emotional abuse. I think you did not explore this in your book. As far as an abuser being dead-to-you, I guess that can be so, even if he is still living, but I swear the ghost of him lingers forever. Even if he is really dead. And, dead or alive, it is the most irksome irony that they go on, here or hereafter, as if nothing ever happened. And, it did not just happen. It was no accident. Talk about "interpretation process." Tonight my husband is being especially devoted: serving me wine, making me pizza, replacing batteries, fixing umbrella, and telling me he knows how unhappy he'd be without me. And I ask him, "Why are you being so nice to me?" After 20 years of marriage, I have to ask? Those of you who are recovering from the ramifications of abuse, tell me, please, do you ever, ever let your guard down? L, PL xxoo missed you all

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#147326 - 07/24/08 02:21 AM Re: Support the Survivor (of DV or SA) [Re: Edelweiss]
Happy Birthday Princess Lenora Offline
Member

Registered: 11/11/04
Posts: 3503
Loc: Colorado
EW, I love love love this image. It looks like there is a signature "Lynn" on the left side of the picture. That is one haunting image. I could stare at it forever.

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#147327 - 07/24/08 11:38 AM Re: Support the Survivor (of DV or SA) [Re: Princess Lenora]
jawjaw Offline
Da Queen

Registered: 07/02/03
Posts: 12025
Loc: Alabama
Lynn, you are missed!

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#147328 - 07/24/08 12:27 PM Re: Support the Survivor (of DV or SA) [Re: Princess Lenora]
Eagle Heart Offline
Member

Registered: 03/22/05
Posts: 4876
Loc: Canada
Quote:

Eagle, I have read your book and your posts for years, and not until your post above did I understand that you suffered from verbal/emotional abuse. I think you did not explore this in your book.




Lynn, I skirted around the periphery of it in Chapter 1, but never really delved into it. It wasn't until my therapist asked me point blank "Did your Mother love you?" that I completely broke down and finally came face to face with the truth and extent of that abuse. What's always been confusing and agonizing to me is that she was a wonderful, generous, kind, lovely woman to everyone else. My two youngest brothers lived with a completely different mother. It wasn't until the mid 1990's that they too began to see the cruelty that I had lived with. After one incident that sent me down to the basement sobbing, my Dad came after me and told me that he had known she was mentally ill ever since just after they got married. But he hadn't known how cruel she had been to me...and he never knew that she had always warned me (since very early childhood) never to tell him anything or else I would make him have a heart attack, thereby stealing my Dad away from me...I lived my entire childhood scared to approach my Dad for fear that I would be the one to kill him!

Anyway, I always knew there was something at the root of the woundedness. You know from my PM's that I thought it was abuse that I couldn't remember. This is what it turned out to be. Again, invisible and insidious, no scars, but lifelong fallout from the damage. We're fixing that. As you've said elsewhere, it's impossible to ever completely remove the smudge, or repaint history so that it never existed, but I'm finally learning how to reclaim my life and not allow the past to steal any more of my joy.
_________________________
When you don't like a thing, change it.
If you can't change it, change the way you think about it.

(Maya Angelou)

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#147329 - 07/24/08 12:48 PM Re: Support the Survivor (of DV or SA) [Re: Princess Lenora]
Eagle Heart Offline
Member

Registered: 03/22/05
Posts: 4876
Loc: Canada
Quote:

Those of you who are recovering from the ramifications of abuse, tell me, please, do you ever, ever let your guard down?




We just talked about this in my therapy session yesterday! The answer so far is NO. I struggle with suspicion, mistrust and such severe social angst that I can't go anywhere without my husband. What the therapist is trying to help me change is that I operate on the micro level, i.e., analyzing every single word, facial expression, body language, searching for the double-meaning and/or the real truth behind the words, always on guard for rejection and abandonment. She thinks that's why I can't feel joy, because I'm convinced that as soon as I let my guard down to feel happy, someone else will leave or throw more crap my way. I have to learn to find (or build) and live out of my core of peace (founded on a self-love that believes I deserve to be happy) instead of out of constant fear.

I'm getting there. My therapist is amazing, God is good and present every step of the way, and so are my sisters at BWS. My "what is" is infinitely richer than "what's not", so that's where my focus is now. Hopefully that will help the walls to come tumbling down...
_________________________
When you don't like a thing, change it.
If you can't change it, change the way you think about it.

(Maya Angelou)

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