How did abuse affect you in your life and relationships?
For many years, I've been reading letters and having conversations with people who have witnessed and endured horrible things during their childhood. Adopted or not, child abuse is a shame that belongs to the adults, not children. Unfortunately, the secrecy adults demand from those they hurt make the pain of betrayal even more confusing and difficult. Where is the escape and relief, if the source of pain can't be revealed or exposed?
I believe this keeping quiet about "family secrets" is the driving-force behind abusive behaviors and acts that continue in the mind of the abused. Damage needs to be repaired, but if it can't be fixed, what happens? Perhaps, for some, it's this internal pressure (to keep quiet) that changes and grows, leading a person to do abusive (damaging) things to himself, or others, "ballancing" the imballance caused by another person.
I've seen how drugs and alcohol, for instance, are used to numb a person's feelings. That escape from the internal pressure is the pleasure, (the "reward"), for being "bad".
Eating disorders, like anorexia or binging are control-issues gone internal. ["If I can't control outside events, I will control inside events, like eating."] She who controls, holds power.
Self-injury, like punching or cutting, can bring relief to those who fear the hatred building inside. The physical release of pain has it's own power that must be felt and experienced in order to be real. For some, pleasure and pain are so closely related, pain must be felt before any pleasure can be experienced.
What do all these acts have in common? Secrecy.
Are there other ways abuse affects a person's perceptions?
Comments
Secret sex
As one who has been through the trenches of rape/incest, I've learned how I associate sex with love, trust and keeping things secret.
At first, I didn't tell anyone about my past, thinking I could remove myself from that ugly part of my life that felt so disgusting to me. The problem with that was, I was creating more and more lies about myself. I had to keep reinventing personalities that I could see as likable. Turned out, the only thing people liked about me was the easy sex.
It took a really long time for me to figure-out why I used sex the way I did. It was all I knew, so I became good at what I did. I made sure I pleased, so I would be liked and wanted again. It worked. It got me one-on-one attention, and for a very brief time, I felt loved and needed. I was appreciated, at least until the sex (the work) was over. That's when I would leave. In my mind, I couldn't get hurt if I left the scene, or wasn't involved. I left emotionally and often I'd leave physically, as well. I left before they could leave me. They call that sexual detachment. http://www.psychotherapist.net/adultsurvivors.html goes into more detail about that.
Before I knew it, I realized I had become this slut. It never occurred to me I would be seen that way, because the sex was always one-sided and hardly ever intercourse. Girls hated me and guys used me, but again, I was used to that type of relationship. It's what I had at home. I think at one point I said something to a guy, but it was too late. My reputaion was already known, so I had to give what was expected, "or else". It was that "or else" that freaked the shit out of me, and made me lose the ability to say "NO!"
Many years later I told a new close friend about my childhood. I saw how close she was with her brother, and later I learned she had sisters, too; that really triggered me. I never saw a brother and sister so close and affectionate. I think I may have thought there was something really weird and creepy about that. I remember watching them, like they were a couple, and I'd think, "how do they do that? how do they get along and not fight or hate one another? do relationships like that really exist? is it because they are real siblings, they have a real connection with one another? WHAT IS IT?" No one in my family was close or affectionate. We were all really distanced and quiet, so I couldn't understand how family members, especially different genders, could get along so well. I had to know the secret to her closeness with her siblings.
That was the first time I told my story, and the enormity hit me like a ton of bricks. I realized what I had been missing my whole life. Protection. I had no boundaries, no limits, no sense of what was appropriate or inappropriate, because everything was a mangled-mess in my home-life.
I've been recovering ever since.
What makes abuse, abuse?
I'm having, always have had, difficulty with knowing what is and understand what is emotional abuse. Emotional abuse is the only kind of abuse that I have ever suffered in my own perception and cognition, but I don't know where the boundaries are, I don't know what of the damage that I have suffered is the results of accidents of fate in my life and what is the result of abuse. I don't believe that I have been much abused and I don't think the fact that I believe I have not been much abused is simply the result of some kind of 'denial'.
If you hurt someone, never meaning to hurt them, is that abuse?
I think what we all went through in school here, was abuse, no one would ever have officially called it abuse at the time, yet caning of children in schools is now banned by almost every government in Europe. Perception both public and personal perception of what is 'abusive' changes. Just because I was not 'abused' when it happened, does that mean even now the perception has changed I was still not 'abused', even though I would be being abused if I were a child today being treated in the same way? That is how English law seems to see it, if what happened to you was seen as acceptable at the time even though it would not be as so now, then you have no claim against your 'abuser'. So was I abused physically at school in an educational system that saw it as perfectly acceptable to inflict corporal punishment on children? Was I emotional abused at home by people who had no concept of what emotional abuse is? Would any of that have been any different if had been a natural child of the family not an adopted child, I'm inclined to think it would have been different if were a natural child of the family (a family of teachers, social workers and clergy as well as farmers and businessmen, so a family that ought on an intellectual level to have known what is and is not abuse)
I'm trying to think about how much of what I perceived as emotional abuse took place in any kind of secrecy, certainly that part of it that happened as result of people acting in their official capacity as Children's Officer, Social Workers, Child Protection officials and Adoption Workers was shrouded in secrecy and those who took over from them try to keep it shrouded in secrecy even over 50 years after the events. But more day to things that might be seen as abusive today? I'm not sure that they were
Am I just getting lost in the semantics here? Certainly I see being forced to keep secrets, secrets that one does not want to keep and which should be told, as form of emotional abuse, I have no doubt about that
Yours confused
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The use of power
I see emotional abuse as being manipulative and proof of one's power over another. "Who's the boss in this situation? I am!". There's little discussion, and lots of commands, and expectations, and threats (implied or spoken), "or else".
Using the threat of violence and instilling fear through punishment - like isolation or removal of something loved - is an easy way to dominate someone. Inconsistent behavior and expectations are also mental-games used to manipulate another person. Roller-coaster emotions are the worst, because you never know what to expect from the person in control, so that itself keeps you on-guard. Walking on egg-shells is no way to live.
Having to please others as proof you are a good person, is another way emotional abuse is taking place. For myself, being good meant I would be kept, and not discarded or abandoned. I think it's sadistic how people use the threat of removal as a means to behave. Religious people are known for doing that, using scripture as their defense, claiming satan's influence on us who don't try harder to be better.
My favorite is how satan is also used as the excuse for this foul treatment towards children. Blame. Gotta blame someone; it sure as hell can't be the controlling person's own fault, mistake, or bad choosing, can it?