make me fall, make me bleed

Hi anon!yes, 100%. I’d even say it’s rather common. We often try to be better than our parents and look out for certain red flags and completely overlook other areas that then end up hurting our own children. 

You’re not an awful person for thinking that. I say this a lot on this blog but it’s never not important: Trauma is not a contest. Don’t think you deserve help any less than others that have suffered. We all have our own issues and they’re all equally worthy of being addressed. 

maybe my trauma wasn’t bad enough

maybe what happened was just my fault??

but what if I can’t hold that person accountable? what if they meant well

what if I don’t have the right to be angry?

but what if they didn’t know they were hurting me? maybe its my fault for not saying it

it’s my fault, i’ve always been hiding how badly things hurt me

i’m just weak and pathetic and everything hurts me it’s not their fault i’m like this

hey this this thing actually happen or did i make that up

if i ask abuser they’ll tell me i made it up that must be true they do say i’m delusional

maybe if I’ve done something differently this wouldn’t have happened

guilt guilt guilt guilt

what if abuser is right tho? what if they’re telling the truth and it’s okay to tell it in insults then?

i’m garbage, i knew it

yeah everyone deserves compassion and comfort but me? no.

I am the sole person who is just bad enough to deserve everything that has happened to me

no this person didn’t mean to hurt my feelings i’m just too sensitive!!!

maybe someone else wouldn’t be hurt by this, this means its my fault

i hate myself

how long until everyone realizes i’m just a fake and there’s nothing valuable inside of me

yeah they like me now but i’m going to fuck it up and they’ll hate me like everyone else

was that abuse? no it can’t be. its my fault. if I wasn’t the way I am it wouldn’t have happened

everything people do to me is just what I deserved

what this person is doing bothers me so I have to try harder not to be bothered by it

this person is wrong but everyone believes them so it must be okay

yeah they hate me but i don’t want them to leave me maybe i can get them to hate me less

yeah this person is hurting me but i still need them in my life maybe if i change myself

it doesn’t matter if they hurt me, i’m used to it

what if everyone abandons me and I die alone

this person scares me but I can’t let that affect me

I shouldn’t be feeling this way, I need to get over my feelings

I can’t let anyone notice how I feel or they will hate me

how does everyone just stay calm? why can’t I do that

I’m a burden on everyone, I bet they’d all be happier if I wasn’t there

if I disappeared right now wouldn’t everything be better?

I don’t think it makes sense to call abuse “unintentional.” The types of things that are referred to as unintentional abuse are things where the abuser has no malice or does not intend to harm the target. (Note that the list of “unintentionally” abusive behaviors includes being controlling of your child, refusing to offer emotional support or love to your child, and ignoring your child.) A result of this divide is the idea that “unintentional” abuse is less bad than “intentional” abuse, and “unintentional” abusers get sympathy at the expense of the survivor. I am under the impression that most abuse is in this “unintentional” category.

My mother has never had malice toward me and she has never intended to harm me or hurt my feelings. People (including my mother) use those facts in order to try to convince me that my mother wasn’t “really” abusive, or to tell me she was justified in her repeated boundary violations.

Abuse is not about malice, nor is it about intent to harm. Abuse is about the values the abusive person has. My mother never intended to harm me, but she values her own experiences of things over mine, and to this day she uses that fact to try to justify to me every time she isolated me by forbidding me from spending time with my friends as a child and a teen. Her intents are irrelevant in the determination of whether that was abusive.

She hit me without malice or intent to hurt me. That doesn’t make her any less abusive. What makes hitting a child abusive is not malice or intent to harm, but that the person has a belief it is okay to hit a child. A belief that it’s okay to disregard someone’s feelings or call them names. My mother had the best of intentions and she to this day insists she did all those things (and more) because she loves me. People in my family defend her choices and insist she can’t have been abusive because she had no malice or intent to harm.

When someone makes fun of you for being sensitive, that is a demonstration that they do not value your feelings and experiences. That is abusive (and gaslighting), regardless of whether the person feels malicious toward you or intends to harm you.

Call abuse what it is. Malicious or hurtful intent are not necessary in order for abuse to have occurred, and thinking that they’re necessary (or that their absence makes abuse “not as bad”) contributes to the idea that abusers have to be monsters in order to be “really” abusive.

I’d like to recommend the book Why Does He Do That by Lundy Bancroft, much of which is about how lack of malicious intent doesn’t make abuse less damaging, and about how most abusers don’t have malice or intent to harm. I consider this book to be an extremely valuable resource in understanding abuse. Though the book primarily focuses on abusive men and the primary audience is female partners of abusive men, the author explicitly states in the preface that the ideas in the book are applicable outside the context of straight relationships and outside the context of partner-relationships.

tl;dr: All abuse is intentional because all of it involves an intentional expression of that the abuser values controlling the target, or values their own experiences and boundaries at the expense of the target’s. Malice and/or intention to harm are not necessary.

p.s. People with BPD and NPD are sometimes called abusive for attention-seeking behavior and for making factual statements about being suicidal. If the behavior doesn’t involve desire to control others, intentional boundary-crossing without permission, or valuing their experiences at the expense of other people’s, it’s not abusive. Be compassionate toward people with BPD and NPD by not spreading the idea that they’re inherently or incorrigibly abusive people, and by challenging that ableist idea when you see it.