Take Care of Yourself, Okay?

anon, I am so, so sorry that you’re in this situation.

Is there any way that you can limit the amount of time you’re in the house/around him? I know people who have gotten summer jobs or taken a class or even a volunteer position so that they could get away from abusive parents. ‘It looks good on my resume/will help me succeed/get my foot in the door’ type statements.

Is there anything that... makes him comment on them less? Some perps are going to comment no matter what. (or their ‘motivator’ is bullshit like size that we can’t do anything about) but sometimes we can try and protect ourselves in small ways.

Do you have any people around you that you do trust? A friend that you could crash the weekend with? Something to keep you grounded.

I want you to know that this is not your fault. Nothing is wrong with you- only with him. You do not deserve the comments. You do not deserve him talking to you about sexual things. and you definitely don’t deserve him touching you.

The urge to minimize and say it isn’t that bad is understandable. Sometimes we have to minimize to survive the bad situation, it’s the only way our brain knows how to help us.

So there’s something called cyber sexual abuse, and most of the research out there for it is about what you’re talking about. Minors and adults. 

Wording is not going to be the smoothest here, so please bear with me.

Is it an urge or an intrusive thought?

If you aren’t sure-

Does it come with an emotional backing? Does it come with a physical sensation?    

If so, urge might not be the best word- but it is probably more that, than intrusive though. 

And this isn’t to shame urges, I differentiate because I have two different general ways advising you to of approach this.

Urge:

Can you isolate? In general, it is often(but not always) best to avoid abusers as much as we possibly can- just in terms of ‘the small number of things we can do to help ourselves’ 

Is there anyway you can limit your time away from him when you feel that way? Any way that you can step away? 

And then from there- treating it like most destructive urges. Which is to say-

your nervous system is excited. Can you wear it out or calm it down?

Exercising/walking can be good for wearing out our nervous system. I had friends who swore by jumping jacks. I used to plank a lot.  Even just ‘shaking it out’ a few times.

Punching a pillow/tearing up things (that you are allowed to destroy and won’t get in trouble for.)

Breathing exercises. I like to make faces when I’m agitated and doing them. 

And of course, your self soothing behaviors. Whether that might be showering for you or lotion with lavender or smoking a cigarette(I wouldn’t advise starting that, of course) or calling a friend.

Intrusive Thoughts:

Intrusive Thoughts... are the bane of my existence. 

And unfortunately, there’s this problem where sometimes ignoring them makes it worse and sometimes engaging with them makes them worse. So you need to check in with yourself as you do things.

For ignoring/dismissing:

Pretend the thought is coming from someone who pisses you off. The intrustive voice is the back seat driver who doesn’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. ‘Screw you, Ned. I’m not gonna do that.’

Acknowledge the thought- but make why you’re not going to do that the point. and try to frame it as positively as possible in terms of your agency. ‘I could do that, but I’d rather do _________’ 

Breathing exercises + imagery exercises. Imagining the thoughts appearing on a white board and being erased off.

More on the engaging side:

Vent to people that you safely can.

Write it down if you can somewhere. Then burn it or hide it. Flush it down the toilet if you want. I write and delete a whole lot of tumblr posts.

I can’t think of the name, maybe someone will comment with it- but there’s a website where you can type in a comment and it will flash on the screen and then disappear.

Personally, when the thoughts are ones I’m worried I might act on during some sort of episode- I try to change my language. So- if I need to vent aggression but I don’t want to think about punching someone because well- I could do that. I could physically punch someone and that would be a bad- I shift my imagery to like ‘kinda hope a house falls on him one day’

I think one thing is important to say- 

you don’t have to be ashamed for having those thoughts. Sometimes survivors worry that they’re just as bad for having them or that they’re a bad person for it.

Your abuser hurt you.

And you’re allowed to be upset with them. and sometimes those kinds of thoughts happen. And sometimes- sometimes we do need to redirect those thoughts for our own safety. But shame doesn’t help with that process.

(PART 2)...had other intentions. Nothing else happened but I started looking at porn online when I had access at age 9 and became obsessed, looking up pictures and masturbating almost everyday for a few years. Would you say this could have been cocsa or should I just forget about it?

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Whether or not it was cocsa-

it sounds like it’s causing you distress and that you think that it caused some patterns that hurt you.

Whether or not it was innocent child curiosity- 

Even if it was-

You are allowed to recognize that something hurt you and you are allowed to see these patterns.

I can’t tell you if your cousin had other intentions. To be honest, if it was an isolated (or at least, not stretching out until y’all were much older) I’m not sure they would be able to tell you what their intentions were. Child brains work so much differently than adult brains and it can be hard to understand what drove us to do things years later.

I’m going to throw a few things out here:

They might not abuse a hosted student. Just like families will sometimes abuse one child but not another- they might not abuse a host student.

Could you contact anyone anonymously to try and sway them away from your parents?

Is there anyway that you could keep in contact with the host student? Or ask a friend/someone you trust in the area to keep an eye on them? That way the host student at least has someone on their side. 

Is there anything you could do to make your parents want to host a student less? Not argue with them. Not fight with them. Just- you know your family better than I do. But are they the type that if you brought up that they’d have less freedom, there’d be more attention on them, money, etc- that they might change their mind?

I say this because unfortunately you’re asking for advice I can’t give you. You know the realities of your situation, and what you can and cannot do without getting hurt further. 

I can’t tell you a secret way to make sure that they won’t host without there being consequences to you. I wish I did. I wish there were more resources out there for abuse survivors and I wish that people believed us more. 

This isn’t quite... the kind of advice we’re here to give. We’re a blog about trauma.

But I will say this because it follows... my general thought pattern for making most decisions.

Weigh the most likely bad option, against the potential good.

What happens if no one posts and someone does ask you about it?

It would be easy for me, as an adult, to minimize that. I could give you some trite line about it not mattering in five years or tell you some story about my highschool birthdays. But here’s the thing-

I have the gift of hindsight when looking back at highschool. I have the gift of ‘I have lived past that’ and ‘here are new things that are important to me’

None of that is useful to you, in the moment. 

So. What happens if no one posts and someone does ask you about it?

How upset are you going to be?

What are the consequences of that upset feeling likely to be? Do you have ways of dealing with that feeling that aren’t harmful to yourself?

Weigh that against the possibility that one or two people do post.

Will it make a difference to you if someone posts a video who doesn’t really talk to you? 

Have you considered the possibility that someone posting but not putting in any other effort to be your friend might make you feel bad?

Is there anything you can do to minimize the posting or not posting will affect you? Could you make plans for that day? Watch a favorite movie? Do something that you find particularly fun while you let the chips sort of land where they will re: people noticing on facebook?

Without more information on how you’re expressing it- I can’t tell you whether or not it comes off as manipulative and because of that I’m going to address this from two angles.  The first mostly because I think it’s a necessary thing to talk about. The second probably a bit more applicable.

a) We don’t have to be trying to manipulate people to come off as manipulative.

I got into this argument with my grandmother recently. Every time she gets upset- and she gets upset often- she starts in with how everyone loves my grandfather more and how maybe she should just disappear forever and threatening to do just that. When I told her she wasn’t going to talk like that in front of children- she got even more upset that we won’t let her have feelings. That she wasn’t trying to be manipulative.

I believe her. I absolutely believe that she is not trying to be manipulative.

It’s still not a good thing, and I’d even go so far as to say in that situation- it doesn’t matter whether or not she’s trying to be manipulative. She is.

If you don’t stop what you’re doing to soothe her at that time (and she’ll argue with you even as you try) she just gets worse and more aggressive. Whether she is consciously seeking that or not- she’s learned that she gets ‘no, no, we love you both the same- we want you here’ type responses when she behaves that way.

I’ve had to watch this about myself in the last few years as well. As many of you know, I’ve suffered from suicidal ideation for a very long time. There... aren’t that many days that go by that I’m not suicidal. And forcing myself to never talk about it wasn’t an answer. 

But I do make a conscious effort to not bring it up during fights. I do not say things like ‘when you do x it makes me want to kill myself’ because the truth is- so does taking a shower sometimes. and when it comes to healthy relationships in my life, it is better for everyone involved if instead I say x causes me distress rather than jumping to that.

b) Most likely much more applicable in this situation-

For some people, any sign that you do not want to do what they want you to do- will be considered manipulative.

Abusive parents will consider their children’s mental illness manipulation because it is something that indicates what they are doing is wrong. And either they are intentionally gaslighting- or they really do believe what they are doing is right, and that it could not have bad consequences. So depression symptoms? That’s just the child trying to be bad. Trying to get out of doing what they’re supposed to.

If you flinch back from an abuser who has never hit you- but does... hint at it. Whether verbally or throwing things or other- they might accuse you of being manipulative. You’re trying to manipulate their anger, you’re trying to make them feel bad for having feelings and expressing those feelings. 

And unfortunately- in those kinds of situation, there really isn’t a right answer for making them not think you’re trying to manipulate them.

Because unless you’re doing everything they want- and even then sometimes- abusers are going to lash out.

And this goes the same for people who may not be abusing you- but there’s some unhealthy behavior going on.

Are there other places that you can express your suicidal feelings? That might remove the ammunition (and them having that ammunition worries me distinctly in the form of  someone trying to get you hospitalized or not allowing you to do things by throwing your mental health back in your face) from them and give you a healthier space to talk about your issues and have them validated rather than treated like a tool.

I wish you the best of luck.

Plenty of people aren’t triggered by their rapist’s name, and plenty of people don’t have flashbacks at all.

One of the things I’ve always hoped to impart to people- is that there’s a wide variety of possible trauma symptoms and no one person usually deals with all of them. It is perfectly okay that you don’t exhibit all the trauma signs. 

It is perfectly okay that 8 months later you don’t have flashbacks and panic attacks anymore.

Not to be foreboding, but you may find they come back in times of high stress. You might not. 

But feeling better? does not mean that you were not hurt by what happened and emotional abuse and rape are not ‘minor.’ I promise. And even those of us who do experience flashbacks and the like often doubt ourselves at times. It doesn’t mean that it didn’t hurt you or that it wasn’t wrong.

Do your best to see the silver lining here- you’re doing better. you’ve made progress. and that is such a big thing.

Can you start small?

One of the biggest things I always found I ran into when it came to bad places- was this sort of-

‘I need to do x and I need to do y and I need to do z and I can’t do all of it’ and that becoming ‘I can’t do any of it’

Lower your start up cost where you can. Instead of trying to convince yourself to write a whole paper, just ‘open the word document and get the first paragraph down’ or the resources written out or pick out the quotes.

whatever it is. Just something smaller than ‘all of it’

bounce if need be. I used to bounce between two or three different things. 10-15 minutes on each at times, or even just ‘write 2-5 sentences, then read from this book’

Are there things you can do from your bed?

Are there things you can do to make another spot easier to function in? (I used to throw sheets over things to hide mess and light candles or incense. Play music or french tv in the background. whatever it is you need to do.)

What is preventing you from getting out of bed?

Yesterday I was so whatever that standing up made me cry. 

But that is very different than say... cyclic thoughts. Is there negative self talk that you can try and .. neutralize? Not make positive- but neutralize. Not ‘I’m going to do great!’ but ‘making an effort at least means I tried’ ‘I wouldn’t have gotten into the program if I wasn’t some kind of competent’

Can you or a friend contact your teachers? I have a friend who is about to reclass? to the next stage (so to get their PhD) and they’ve been having migraines. Their supervisors? are working with them. Playing to their strengths and finding ways they can work from home when need be.

And at the same time- can you put some time into trying and process? Sometimes what happens is... we do put up these blocks on processing and it leaks out everywhere.

so could you instead try and say ‘okay at _______ time I will __________’ 

Remember, to process you don’t always have to talk about the actual event. Depending on what it is- it might not even help to talk about it. (One thing I’m currently getting friction from with friends is like- I will be upset, and I will say ‘no I’m not going to talk about it’ and instead of recognizing that this is me realizing talking about it more just escalates my feelings and doesn’t resolve anything- pull the whole validating ‘you can talk about it with me/you can trust me/I support you’ without... listening... to what I’m saying.)

But what can you do to process those emotions surrounding it? Would having a good cry help? you don’t even have to cry over the thing. Sometimes just crying helps. I personally cry at things like Kubo and Moana. 

Would purposely being kind to yourself help? A hot shower or candles or nice food. reminding yourself that you have worth. Soothing that kind of wound.

Do you need a chance to just scream? Do you have a place you could go to do that?

Would writing about it help?

These are all the things I could think of off the top of my head without having more information. 

I wish you the best of luck with your work. I promise you, there is somewhere that you will be able to start. I won’t promise that it’ll be smooth sailing from there, I have no interest in that sort of blind optimism. But it does usually get easier once you start breaking the rock down into smaller ones.

It’s totally fine to draw boundaries about what you can and can’t talk about in a relationship. You can have a hard line like “When you talk about X, it’s really triggering for me.” Or go on a case by case basis and say “I can’t talk about X right now because it puts me in a really bad emotional place.” You’re both survivors and dealing with your own issues. Telling him that you can’t always handle it is fine. Maybe even asking each other if you’re in the right emotional place to have these talks is a great boundary. There is some stuff you can do to stay safe and still be supportive.

I think it’s also really important to recommend another person for him to talk to about it. It’s not necessarily healthy to be the only person somebody relies on. If he’s seeing a counselor or a therapist, maybe encourage him to discuss it with them more. Maybe keeping a journal to document his feelings would help. There are a lot of options that won’t hurt you own growth and recovery. 

Be safe.

Is there anything you can do to help make the space you change less triggering? Sometimes doing it in a bedroom can help- or straight up In The Shower. Maybe listening to music or having a distraction or a mantra?

Also, could you try not being completely undressed if that is the trigger? Washclothes can do wonders under clothes and yeah, it means a bit more laundry if you shower in a shirt- but sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

I don’t necessarily think it’s weird. I think different abusers affect us more at different times. I could spend lots of time feeling bad about my teenage years, while kind of ignoring what happened in college. It doesn’t mean abuse didn’t happen in college. It just means my mind is on something else. Also, if you were in a situation where multiple abusers were in a very short span of time, differentiating them can be a challenge. It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Our brains also do weird things over time, so it’s probably a bit normal for this to happen. I think your therapist could explain it a bit better, but that’s the general idea.

You also don’t have to name somebody for abuse to have happened. There’s a lot we don’t share with the world that still happened to us. I think that’s really important to remember. Sharing or not sharing trauma doesn’t make it any less valid. You know what you went through. 

Be safe.

(2/2) i want to heal and move on so so badly. but i'm really struggling with thoughts of doubt, of self hatred, of confusion. some people have suggested that i talk to him, or her, or both. but like i said even seeing them in passing or thinking about them ruins me and takes me back to square one. so should i talk to them? should i heal on my own first? i don't know what to do, and how they're going to react terrifies me. everything is just so overwhelming.

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend confronting them directly. I would recommend asking your teacher not to put you in any groups with him or not seat them next to you. That’s probably a fair request that the teacher would honor. You don’t have to go into details, but it might help. You could also talk to the school counselor or whoever sets your schedule and not be in the same class with him in the future. That may take a little more convincing, but it’s worth a shot.

If you want to confront him, go ahead. Don’t necessarily bring her into it unless you want to tell her the truth. She doesn’t know what really happened between you two, and that’s not necessarily her fault. Maybe that’s a conversation the two of you should have in private. I can’t tell you what to do, but I can tell you I’d want to know if something like that happened to my ex.

Most importantly, be safe. If confronting anyone or approaching teachers puts you in an unsafe emotional or physical situation, it’s totally fine to not do it. I can tell you as a teacher and a survivor that knowing to keep my student away from an abuser is fine. There are even some students who have it on their electronic file that they shouldn’t be in a class with somebody. There are some school-specific solutions that could help. Feel free to message back and tell me how it goes.

Emotional flashbacks are totally a thing. 

Some questions- Do you know if this is a time of year that something bad might have happened? It could be a traumaversary as well (or, at least, around that time.)

Has the weather recently change/you changed environment? Some triggers are physical. Weather, smells in the air, types of decorations on people’s houses (hello, reason why I spend october a wreck). Sometimes even types of stress can trigger people (they were working on a big project when something bad happen and now everytime they start to work on something like that- their stomach churns.)

Unfortunately, the advice is the same as it is for other kinds of flashbacks.

-Is there anything you can do that will fully distract you and can that help you reset? (I do multiplication and division in my head. I know people who play instruments or do jumping jacks)

-On the jumping jack note- would expelling energy help? Sometimes people find it helps to aggressive wiggle, hold planking positions until they can’t anymore, do wall sits, jumping jacks, run. 

-What about processing the trauma memory? This is a little less applicable if you aren’t sure what’s going on. But- are there any strange thoughts before you have the panic attack? Do you notice any specific triggers going on around you? Could you start to write about the panic attack and see if anything comes up?

-Using sensory information to ground. Strong smells, strong tastes, different textures. Basically- stimulating different parts of the brain and also reing our connection to this plane instead of where our heads are.

-Try your best and do as many... restorative things as possible in this time period. I know sometimes we’re like ‘I’ve already done self care today’- but think of it like water and exercise.

!! I’m so proud of you.  Sometimes the biggest thing we can do? Is figure out the best place to begin rather than just rush into things.