abuse – Page 6 – Real Social Skills

The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere

June 16, 2013June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

“I have a good friend in the East, who comes to my shows and says, you sing a lot about the past, you can’t live in the past, you know. I say to him, I can go outside and pick up a rock that’s older than the oldest song you know,
and bring it back in here and drop it on your foot. Now the past didn’t go anywhere, did it? It’s right here, right now.
I always thought that anybody who told me I couldn’t live in the past was trying to get me to forget something that if I remembered it it would get them serious trouble.

Utah Phillips, “The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere”

Just about everyone who has been the victim of abuse, or has lived through something horrible, has been told that they need to stop living in the past. That they need to get over it and move on already, because things are different now.

But the past didn’t go anywhere. It’s still right here, right now. Everything that happened to you, everything they did to you – it all stays happened. And it never stops mattering. Because going through trauma changes things permanently. (and so does every other type of experience, for that matter. But not in the same way).

The past doesn’t have to stop mattering, and you don’t have to pretend that it doesn’t matter anymore. You can build a life, and make good things happen for yourself, even though the past didn’t go anywhere and it never stops mattering.

Even if sometimes you wake up terrified, even if you bear scars, even if you’ve lost a lot of abilities you once treasured, even if you’ve lost your community and everyone you once thought you could count on.

Life is still worth living, and good things are still possible. Even though the past didn’t go anywhere. And acknowledging that the past is still there and that it still matters makes it more possible to rebuild, not less.

Just like you can’t live in a physical abstraction and accepting the reality of your physical body and its limits makes life better, you can’t live in an abstraction of an imaginary theoretical mind that you might have had without the trauma. You have to live as the person you are, and build from there.

And your live is worthwhile, and important, even if some things never heal. The past didn’t go anywhere, but you can keep going.

A short additional point about forgiveness

June 11, 2013June 20, 2021 Real Social Skills

You can get distance without forgiving the person who hurt you.

In in particular, you can get past a point of being consumed by anger without forgiving the person who hurt you.

Because your recovery is not about that person. It’s about you. And you don’t have to forgive them to get them out of the center of your emotional life.

Sometimes distance is better than forgiveness

June 11, 2013June 20, 2021 Real Social Skills

Sometimes, someone hurts you in a way that’s permanently and forver dealbreaking.

Some people will tell you that you have to forgive the person who hurt you in order to move on. Sometimes, they will put lots of pressure on you and tell you that if you’re still suffering, it’s your own fault for bearing a grudge.

But… you don’t have to forgive someone to get distance. You can do that by creating a boundary. Sometimes that means you limit contact with them to areas in which they’re safe for you. Sometimes that means you break off contact entirely. In any case, it’s something you can do unilaterally.

You can break away and build a life that has nothing to do with them. They don’t have to loom large in your life forever.

And you don’t have to get closure or resolution or anything like that in order to move on. What you have to do is move on and do other things.

It takes time and it doesn’t fix everything (neither does forgiveness, despite cultural tropes). But it allows you to build space for yourself, without that person’s hurt taking over everything. And you don’t have to forgive them or do anything at all regarding them to get that space.

Your life is about you, not the person who hurt you.

Noticing when someone is using your triggers to disorient and confuse you

May 14, 2013June 20, 2021 Real Social Skills

When someone is using your triggers to disorient and confuse you, it’s confusing. It can take a long time to figure out what’s going on.

Here are some things I think are red flags:

If someone seems to like you more when you’re triggered than when you’re in control, something is seriously wrong

For instance, if a therapist only listens to you when you’re sobbing and otherwise acts as though you couldn’t possibly understand anything about yourself
Or when a friend suddenly finds you fascinating when you’re triggered and they’re supporting you through it, but they half-ignore you most of the rest of the time

If someone feels entitled to discuss triggering subjects with you (absent an immediate practical reason to), something is seriously wrong:

For instance, if you say that you’d rather not discuss dogs right now because it’s triggering and you’re close to the edge already, and they say “but I thought we were friends! How can you shut me out like that?”
Or if a therapist tells you that you’ll never get better unless you are willing to discuss once again, in graphic terms, the ways people abused you – and they refuse to say, help you figure out whether the medication you are taking is working, or whether the side effects are dangerous, unless you do this over and over

If you end up triggered every time you try to reject personal advice, something is seriously wrong:

For instance, if someone regularly wants to tell you how to dress, and every time you try to wear something different, they push you until you end up sobbing and apologizing, something is wrong
This is particularly the case if they’re always bringing triggering things into a conversation that didn’t need to have anything to do with them
Your desire to wear a red hat rather than the blue on they want you to wear is probably because you want to wear a red hat
It’s very unlikely that it’s because you have no perspective on clothes because your abusers damaged you
And even if that was the reason, it would still be ok for you to prefer a red hat, and wrong for someone to try to force you to wear a blue one by triggering you

Beware of folks who trigger others on purpose

May 13, 2013June 20, 2021 Real Social Skills

There are people who like other people to be intensely emotionally dependent on them. They like to control people through this emotional dependence. And they like to think of this control and forced dependence as understanding the target on a deep level, rescuing them, and helping them to heal.

One way this happens is that the controller will deliberately trigger the target over and over. And then get really good at triggering them and then comforting them. And this can – in the short term, make the target feel safe and understood. Because having someone react in a way that feels comforting when you’re triggered can be really reassuring, especially when people have reacted with fear or contempt in the past.

And it can be really hard to figure out that someone is intentionally and repeatedly triggering you. It can be *especially* hard to realize they’re doing this if they also have some actual insight about the issues you’re struggling with. And it can also be harder to understand what’s going on if they’re also supporting you in other ways, like offering a place to stay or help finding a job.

And the longer this goes on, the more they know about you. And the more they know, the more power they have to trigger you at will. And when you show independence, or do something they don’t want, or do something on your own initiative rather than relying on their help, or say no to help they’re offering – then they don’t react reasonably. They use your triggers to disorient you. They convince you that you don’t really understand anything that’s going on, and that you are just reacting to past traumas. And that in order to approximate being a real person, you have to rely on their judgement rather than yours.

A wide range of people do this. Sometimes it’s a friend. Sometimes it’s a licensed therapist with a good professional reputation. Someone’s it’s a coworker. Sometimes it’s a social worker. Sometimes it’s a partner. It can arise out of a lot of different kinds of relationships. It’s always wrong, no matter what someone thinks their intentions are.

And it’s not your fault. If you’re in that situation, someone’s probably got you half-convinced that this is only happening because you’re broken and need help. But that’s not what’s going on; this is something someone is doing to you, not something that inherently happens to people like you. No one, no matter what problems they have, should ever be treated like this.

Name changes for private reasons

April 19, 2013June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

lunethefool asked realsocialskills:

…TW for CSA, abuse: I was sexually abused by my mother for years when I was a kid. She named me after her illicit lover, and I kind of hate that sometimes because that’s how she treated me too. I want to change my name, at least socially if not legally, but I don’t know how to explain the change. I’m not comfortable telling everyone the truth.

First and foremost, you don’t owe people an explanation, and you don’t have to offer one. Some people will want to ask invasive questions, but you don’t have to answer.

In my experience (as someone who’s been through a couple of name changes), people are usually much more curious about your new name than they are about your reasons for changing it. For that reason, I would suggest that you consider picking a new name that is *not* symbolically related to the abuse you experienced, or to anything else painful. I find it much more comfortable to deal with discussing my name now that I’ve changed it to something easily explained without reference to any of my painful reasons for changing it.

Also, if you coin a new word to name yourself, it will sound ethnic to people who treat folks outside their group as self-narrating zoo exhibits, and they will ask you invasive questions about your background. You might decide that’s ok with you, but it’s something to be aware of. I wasn’t really prepared for how draining that was when I had that kind of name.

If you choose a name that sounds like a hippie name, people will ask you if you had hippie parents. If you’re changing your name because of parental abuse, this might be worth avoiding.

A friend of mine once suggested this script for a man who wanted to change his name legally:

Why do you want to change your name?
“For spiritual reasons.”
What are they?
“I can’t really tell you much about that.”

This worked well for him in court. It might also work well interpersonally. I’m not sure. What works for me is to have a very short explanation, and not offer further details.

Some possibilities:

I go by x now.
I actually go by x now.
I’m changing my name to x in honor of my grandfather.
I’ve decided to go by my middle name.
I’m using my religious name now (actual religious names have specific words used to refer to them, but I don’t know what they’re called for very many religions).
I wanted to reconnect with my heritage, so I’m going by x now.

If you want people to stay out of it, don’t give them a way into it. It’s probably better not to tell them that you have painful history with your original name, because some people will take that as an invitation to evaluate your decision. The only way to win that game is not to play. You don’t have to discuss it with anyone. I don’t discuss my names with very many people. Push come to shove, all they really need to know is what name you prefer to be called by.

When you realize that it’s wrong…

January 23, 2013June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

I’m asking you because you are a good person. My brother has dyslexia and all his life he was bullied to think he was worthless, a mistake of our mother. I admit I have my parcel of blame in this, but I too was raised to think of him of a lesser being by our grandmother. These days he’s being bullied by his teachers, expecting him to get higher grades, again, like mine. He asked me the other day what he would do with his life, because he really thinks he is unskilled and is a big waste of time and space. He asked me what he is good with, because from his eyes, he can’t do anything right.

I honestly don’t know what to say to him and I know this is pretty much because I was born resembling my grandmother with my father’s memory while he resembles mother in almost everything, whom grandmother hated until she died.

I don’t know what to do, please help us.

I don’t know your brother and I don’t know what he’s good at, so I can’t address that directly, but, here’s what I can suggest:

Talk to him about the abuse

Tell him that what you and your grandmother did to him was wrong
Tell him that what his teachers are doing is wrong and disgusting
Tell him that he shouldn’t be treated like that and that it isn’t his fault
It’s not because of his grades, or anything about him. It’s because of prejudice and hate

Be honest about your part in it, and do what you can to treat him right from now on

Tell him that you’re sorry for your part in it, but don’t make it about you trying to feel better or get him to reassure you
Be specific about things you’ve done to him that you think were wrong
Don’t do those things
When he points out that you’re still doing those things, apologize and stop
Don’t expect him to trust you just because you’ve realized it was wrong – you have to stop doing it, over a long period of time, before it’s likely that you will seem safe
Listen if he wants to talk, but don’t push the issue

And here are some things I’d say to him directly, if I was talking to him rather than you:

It’s ok not to know what you want to do or are good at:

Doing stuff is awesome, and life gets better when you find good stuff to do
Everyone has worthwhile things they can do
It takes time and work and exploration to figure out what they are and get good at them
School isn’t conducive to this kind of growth for everyone
School is actively harmful to some people.
Having school and an unsupportive family undermine your ability to find things to do is really, really common for people with learning disabilities
It isn’t your fault that this happened to you, and struggling in that environment doesn’t suggest anything bad about you
You don’t have to be a super accomplished superhero to have worth as a person. Don’t hold yourself to that standard.

Spending more time on things you like helps:

People who struggle with school are often taught that anything they like is a waste of time, and that they should stop doing it and spend more time banging their head against impossible or barely-possible assignments
That’s really bad advice; you can’t develop your interests and abilities by renouncing everything you like
Finding stuff you like and are good at is more important than faking normal at school.
If you like video games, play them
If you like TV shows, watch them
If you like cooking, cook things
If you like talking to people online, find people to talk to
Etc etc. These are just some examples of things some people like, not necessarily things you do or should like. Do things that *you* like.
Doing things you like is important. Even if they’re activities other people don’t value very much. You have to explore to find out what you like and can do well. And you need space to do that in. So, take some space.

Acknowledging limitations creates abilities

People with disabilities are often taught that if we don’t acknowledge limitations, we won’t have any
And then we are forced to spend lots and lots of time and effort pretending that this is true
We spend so much time pretending that we can do things and forcing ourselves to do things that are barely possible, that we don’t have much available for anything else
If we acknowledge limitations and stop doing that, then all that time and energy becomes available for doing other things
And then we can actually start doing things well and succeed at things
Acknowledging and understanding disability is one of the most important life skills anyone with a disability can develop.

Connect with other people with similar issues:

Special ed teachers and other alleged experts often don’t know what they’re talking about
They will often advise you to do actively harmful things
Peer support from other people with related disabilities helps, because they often know what they’re talking about and have strategies for dealing with it.
In any case, judge for yourself and do what you think will help you. No one else gets to tell you what your coping strategies have to be.