#complex abuse

You blocked, and that’s fine. I’m not interacting. But I’m not about to be fucking silent about this either, because THIS IS HARMFUL TOO. WHAT THE FUCK?!

And now I’ll zoom in for anyone asking How:

Having NPD doesn’t give you the right to gaslight abuse survivors. This is literally what I mean when I tell y’all that you are telling us what we went through doesn’t exist. Because that is exactly what you’re doing right here. “Just using a word in a clinical setting,” is YOUR assumption of one example I gave. Where btw I specifically stated that there are books on this term by people who research it- Guess whaaattt? FUCKING CLINICALLY!!

Calling me the harmful enemy and blocking me doesn’t erase that from existing, and it doesn’t erase the harm your own words will cause to abuse survivors if you continue to act like this form of abuse doesn’t exist.

Because IT DOES FUCKING EXIST!! It’s literally the thing y’all want us to call COMPLEX ABUSE. That’s what it fucking is. It’s the same exact set of abuse behaviors from almost ALL types of abuse. So for one, telling people it doesn’t is just as harmful to survivors, and for two, if you just act like it doesn’t exist anymore, then where the fuck was all that harm in the first place? You’ll end up only minimizing and trivializing the exact fucking thing you want acknowledged by changing the term’s name!

You’re genuinely only hurting us both. None of this response is helpful. Calling the form of abuse I continue to survive “Just abuse,” isn’t fucking helpful either. Because it’s not. “Just abuse.” It’s complex abuse. That’s the whole fucking point of there being a term that we’re trying to change the name of in the first place.

And most importantly: Telling me the form of abuse I go through isn’t real, doesn’t fucking make the word we already have to type in to get our treatment shit to pull up just magically not exist yeah? So stop this already. It isn’t the way we solve this fucking issue.

Hey so uh, I don’t think about the topic in terms like this. There’s absolutely nothing “special,” about any form of abuse. It’s a serious matter across all terms. There is nothing ‘regular,’ about abuse either. That’s literally the whole point of the word abuse here. Abuse is the outlier. It’s made up of deliberate, harmful, and repeated behaviors/actions that go beyond all reasonable ‘regular,’ expectations. All put simply, of course.

The particular pattern of behavior in the clinical terms that concerned people wish to change— and I’m all for listening to those people, so I use Complex Abuse, as an alternative, myself, in the context of what professionals use in treating patients with history of surviving abuse can use all of those “classic,” as you put it, modifiers at once. (Emotional, Physical, Financial, etc.)

As I understand it, the way an abuser will do this involves a deliberate and intentional use of the narcissistic personality trait. There is an awareness and implementation of this trait to complete the pattern of behavior that makes up what the clinical pros call: an abuse strategy.

And let me be very clear: Neither I nor any professional who has helped me in trauma recovery have EVER used this term in any therapeutic treatments/materials to state or imply in any way the personality disorder of the same name automatically makes any person with a diagnosis of said disorder an abuser.

But that doesn’t mean I’ll sit here and tell you that there aren’t shitty doctors and therapists who might actually operate as such or say that it DOES mean that either. And I just happen to have severe anxiety disorders, so I understand these concerns perfectly. I deal with the whole “being anxious versus having anxiety,” conflations all the time.

Yo so I did the thing, bc I think I’m blocked? I don’t want to disrespect that or anything, I just didn’t realize this wasn’t already clear on the post

So uh you try to fucking tell that to an actual survivor- who if you don’t know: most commonly don’t/can’t fucking realize they’re being abused in the first place, because that’s what abuse trauma does to a person. See where that fucking trauma response gets you. I’ll give you a little hint: It’s not going to be anywhere close to achieving what you want, pal.

And then guess what the fuck does happen when they finally go to a professional for help with the ~oh just three different types of abuse~ effects, and describe any of it. Oh, fucking lookie here: professional calls it, WHAT?! NA, because that’s the fucking term they have for this shit what a biiiig ol’ goddamn surprise, huh?!

I don't think (or at least hope) that anyone is meant to dismiss anyone's experiences, or that these patterns and abusive situations of this complexity don't exist, but a lot of people who regularly post about N. Abuse have often equate abusive behavior with NPD and have this "evil narcs!!" mentality, which is one hand not true, and on the other not what people clinically refer to as n. abuse.

Nonny, what the entire fuck else do you expect to happen, when people go into the NA tags, specifically to post shit like “Daily reminder: NA isn’t real~ uwu” and then when they, inevitably, are challenged on that, because NA is already treated as a real, clinical thing by professionals, no matter how many times they post it’s not real, they just go: “NA doesn’t exist, block me if you ~beeellieeeevveee in it~” Or WORSE! To other traumatized people, mind you. Like, even if they do mean ALL of that you’re saying, they’ve got the fucking worst way of showing it I’ve ever seen. Not to mention that’s the definition of gaslighting, so uh Oof?? On that one??

Hell, even when I got fed up and actually made a post about it, just outright asking people for a word to focus on, rbs went out of their way to tone police ME instead, and made sure to let me know just how stupid they thought it was of me to use a term that I didn’t fucking choose to make clinical in the first place.

And how the hell is “This is not real,” supposed to help that misinformation anyway?! If anything, that call is coming from inside the house, because there are those with NPD actually posting “How to deal with us,” shit out there too, so like how is telling everybody it’s not real even helpful to any of us?! Spoiler alert: it’s not. In fact, I’d argue that it does more harm than anything, because they also could just be correcting people that Being abusively Narcissistic is not the same as having NPD?? But for some reason, nobody even wants to remember the fact that “being narcissistic,” is a thing? Ya know the personality trait that still exists even without the disorder?? Same as how you can be depressed without inherently having MDD?? Like that’s just using the term NA to stigmatize, which sure, we can still change the words around to avoid the confusion, but that doesn’t change anything about those people doing that with the term, because that’s already a deliberate action on their part anyway! That already means they know the correct information and still chose to use it for stigma, which they’re still going to try to do, no matter what changes are made.

I started karate, thinking I could sleep over and eat food. They asked me to hit my friend. As hard as I could. I couldn't understand why. I cried into my blue and fish covered sleeping bag. The food was terrible and they took us to places where people used to be.

My fingers got sore and big. I showed my mother and I got hit. She told me I must have found a plant that did this. I didn't play with plants, or in the dirt - I knew I would get hit if I did. I couldn't understand.

Every winter this would happen until a teacher asked me to wear gloves.

My best friend came over.

We had sandwiches on the grass.

She didn't like tomatoes - I didn't know and thus didn't tell my mother.

My mother had to make her a new sandwich.

After she left, I was hit for not knowing. She was my friend, how could I not know.