Tag: abuse mention –

that one post about non-apologies that’s currently going around kind of vaguely pisses me off, especially the versions that talk about how that kind of apology is an abuse tactic. i understand its main point, but also i am an abuse victim who’s been taught to apologize for anything that may anger my abuser, even if i wasn’t really in the wrong per se. i know now that my abuser gaslit me into believing harmless behaviors were wrong simply because she didn’t like them. i’m also autistic and not always great with empathy or social graces, so sometimes i stick my foot in my mouth. in fact, i have reason to believe that’s a big part of why i’ve been abused. add it up, and it means that i often upset people without knowing how much of an ass i was being or how justified their anger at me is. 

so i may not understand what i did wrong or why it was wrong, but if your feelings are genuine (and sometimes i have no damn idea if they are), then i am truly sorry for hurting you. i also feel the need to offer explanations for my behavior because i know i don’t always think like other people, and i really really don’t want any more people to think of me as a bad person. because being perceived as a bad person means more hate and abuse.

tl;dr my so called “non-apologies” are a kind of defense mechanism against being abused and gaslit, and i use them even when i am honestly sorry, partly because i feel a need to protect myself and partly out of habit. i’m not a bad person and i don’t want to be a bad person and i swear to god my apologies are almost always genuine. i’m scared that people will look only at my words and decide i’m being evil just because they were told that specific phrasing is always wrong.

bvcknsteve:

agenderpinkiepie:

my mom was talking about how she didn’t like a series of unfortunate events that much because it falls into the “adults are stupid” trope which she doesn’t think is realistic and i… really just don’t know how to explain to her that the point isn’t that adults are stupid, it’s that children don’t get listened to. some of the adults in the series are actually very smart, their problem is that even the good and decent adults in the series seem to staunchly refuse to believe the baudelaire children are just as smart as they are, or that they may know what they’re talking about, out of the sheer fact that the baudelaire children are children. it isn’t always a story of “adults are stupid, kids are smart, kids rule, adults suck,” it’s a story of “children are often mistreated or taken advantage of or at the very least condescended to, and don’t get their voices heard because adults don’t trust them enough to validate a child saying they are in an unfair or even abusive situation”

a lot of abuse cases get thrown to the side because of this sort of thinking, so urge your fellow people to watch how easy it can happen through this series. make this point exactly.

feministingforchange:

apersnicketylemon:

anti-feminism-pro-cats:

apersnicketylemon:

The real irony of the people who make jokes about being triggered is that they tend to idolize the military/veterans as if combat related PTSD isn’t a real thing that also has triggers. Y’all make fun of the people you call hero’s when you’re making fun of the teenagers with PTSD from non-combat related issues, you can’t separate the two.

Most of the people making fun of triggers are making fun of all the bullshit “”“triggers”“”, as in the people calling a mild uncomfortable feelings triggers.

The problem with making fun of a trigger is you genuinely do not know whether they are ‘mildly uncomfortable’ or if that is a thing that is genuinely causing severe anxiety, depressive episodes, or stress responses. Most of the “““““bullshit”““““ triggers I’ve seen being made fun of are actual trauma survivors who have their trauma associated with something unusual or strange. Because the thing that triggers their PTSD or panic is odd, people, not unlike yourself, are writing them off as “whiny babies” or “triggered sjws” or call their trigger bullshit because they cannot understand the association.

For examples: Sirens are one of my triggers. When I hear sirens I get an immediate panic response. This was due to being in an active war zone as a child (The response is significantly worse if it is an air raid siren or sounds too similar to an air raid siren.). If you didn’t know I was in an active war zone though, it might seem silly to see an adult panic and attempt to get to a safe place because an ambulance, fire truck, or police car went past them.

I have a manager who is triggered by the presence of police. Specifically police, other uniforms are fine (i.e. security in the mall does not set off her panic response). Her trigger is severe, if a police officer talks to her, she starts panicking and sobbing and cannot control it. This is because when she was young, two police officers threatened her repeatedly and psychologically abused her for 6 hours while they tried to find out where her brother was (yes, this was illegal. Her parents were not home at the time, and were unaware she was alone as the brother in question was meant to be watching her). If you didn’t know that story though, it might seem silly to see an adult woman burst into tears and have a panic attack because a cop said ‘hi’ to her.

I have seen posts by an abuse survivor talking about how the sound of a garage door triggered them, due to abuse by a parent. They associated that sound with the abuser returning home and the abuse beginning. The sound became a trigger because their mind associated it to that. I saw another post by a rape survivor talking about how she was triggered by the sight of eggs because she made eggs for her rapist after he’d raped her. Her mind associated eggs with the trauma due to the two being connected at least in her mind.

Brains are weird. Trauma doesn’t make sense. The point is, YOU do not know if someone is ““““bullshitting”“““ or not. You do not know how someones trauma associated itself with something odd, which is something trauma really does all the time and making fun of trauma survivors because you don’t understand the association between their trauma and the item that triggers their ptsd or anxiety is absolutely wrong and absolutely hypocritical if you think any other form of trigger is acceptable or okay. You don’t get to decide other peoples trauma triggers. They didn’t even get to decide them, and to tell someone that you’re okay to make fun of them because what upsets them doesn’t make sense to you is absolutely not okay.

I should note too: Phobia’s are real triggers too. People have panic attacks when exposed to their phobia’s in the wrong way. I need certain pictures tagged because I am absolutely terrified of heights, which is a pretty common phobia. People can have serious phobia’s to everything and anything though, and there are things I am not afraid of that others are that may seem strange to me, but to them are very real and very frightening. Just because it seems odd to you, doesn’t mean it isn’t still real to the person experiencing it.

This post needs a zillion more notes. As a Complex PTSD sufferer I truly hope that people will someday stop policing others’ triggers and health problems as if they have a single clue. 

Just BACK OFF and let people LIVE.