sometimes abuse victims will think they were/are not being abused. sometimes abuse victims will think it's okay they were/are being abused for whatever reason.
sometimes abuse victims will insist to others that they were/are not being abused. sometimes abuse victims will insist to others that it's okay they were/are being abused for whatever reason.
in fact, leading a victim to believe that what is happening is normal and fine and even good or righteous for whatever reason is a common feature of abuse, whether the abuser did it on purpose or not.
if an abuse victim in your life...
questions whether they were abused
goes back and forth about whether they think they were abused
tells you they weren't being abused, and then later says they were
...these can all be very normal parts of living with abuse trauma and don't mean someone is lying or exaggerating about being abused.
^^^ These are all things I struggled with for years! Still sometimes I have days where I think "it wasn't THAT bad" or "I had it coming" or "but they're not bad people"- but it was still abuse! It still happened, and it was still bad, and even if I DID do something annoying or bad to make them WANT to treat me badly back, that doesn't mean it was okay!
It's difficult to accept, but impossible to move on without accepting.
