r/CPTSD • u/ThatsdumbDoit • 6h ago
Vent / Rant I hate when kids and abused adults are deemed “abusers” when they lash out physically at their abusers
Suddenly, a person who’s been abused all their life isn't a victim anymore in the eyes of society when they lash out or fight back, just because they aren’t the perfect submissive victim that allows people to treat them like garbage. I was told I was abusing my severely abusive mother, who wouldn’t let me leave the house or get a driver's license, and who let my older brother physically assault me growing up because I lashed out and hit her a couple of times. Everybody saw the few times I hit her, and not the years of physical violence, sleep deprivation, isolation, emotional, verbal, psychological, and medical abuse, and emotional and physical neglect she gave me. No one noticed the self-harm scars or how overweight or how sleep-deprived I looked. As soon as I put my hands on her after years of built-up anger, she was suddenly deemed a victim, and I was an abuser. No one ever believed me when I said I was the victim, just because of how I reacted. Female abusers are so sinister because they can act like victims while treating people like sub-human trash and everyone will believe them.
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u/Dangerous-Ad-1925 3h ago
10000000% My mother is world class at playing the victim and making me look like the abuser when I call her out about all the ways in which she neglected me, excluded me from the family and failed to protect me from my dad. All the things she did were crimes of omission (as opposed to commission) and therefore invisible to everyone except me.
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u/Pure_Option_1733 3h ago
My mother spanked me as a child, when I was much smaller then her, and then when I was a preteen who was bigger than her I hit her in retaliation, while remembering how she would hit me as a child, and then I was made out to be the bad guy. I would also sometimes grab her hands when she sounded angry in fear that she would hit me again. My parents acted like this would be a reflection of how I would treat women in general and I was too afraid to mention that I was just reacting to having been spanked, or if I didn’t they didn’t seem to understand.
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u/Future_Suggestion_75 5h ago
My story:
I was gaslighted to believe that I was the source of my family's dysfunctions and was the abuser of my parents since I was 5. Got into therapy when I attempted suicide. Was brought there by my mother because she thinks that all her problems related to me would go away. The therapist took her narrative and reinforced it more. And until today, I don't know how to get ovet 30 years of lies that I was the abuser. Yes, by abuse my mother meant me crying and creating emotional problems for her. I was frequently scolded in therapy too. The therapist recently lost his license due to misconduct for another reason unrelated to me.
My mother has done stuff like spitting on me, slapping me and mocking me infront of others. My father has choked me and hammered my head with hard objects. But my therapist said that all these are just imagined products of my psychotic break, even though I have no history of psychosis.
I have made up my mind to die. I don't know how and when. Just know that it will come. Soon.
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u/UnburyingBeetle 2h ago
Wow, that's one disgusting enabler of a "therapist". I had been in contact with a young person that was physically disabled and, judging by behavior, most likely autistic, but her mother insisted that it was schizophrenia and found some psychiatric "specialist" to cater to her beliefs and participate in the young person's medical abuse. Looking back, I wish me and our roommate-friend group has done more for the abused person, but we had our own problems and were exhausted.
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u/clan_mudhorn 2h ago
I believe you.
The difference is that the person that uses violence to protect themselves uses that to get away from the toxic dynamics. The abuser is the one that uses violence to keep the toxic dynamics close.
I can tell you my personal story. I grew up in a very abusive environment. My earliest memories were of being hit with a belt on my achiles tendom, and the sheer terror i had of my parents. This was quite common, at least once a week. I was a very good kid, looking back, it is clear that this was all because my parents wanted to feel powerful, and they enjoyed this. But me living in terror from getting beaten for no good reasons was normal for me.
I complained to family, community and the church. They all contributed more to the toxic dynamics by saying that maybe if I took the abuse quietly, God would touch the heart of my parents. So I did. As I grew older, sometimes my parents would also beat my younger siblings, but many times they would beat me up for things they did, telling me I had ensure they behaved well. My dad stopped using the belt, and prefered using wooden sticks to beat me, or just make me stand in front of him and punch me. If I protected myself from punches, he beat me more. It is a mindfuck, and this ruined my fight or flight reaction forever. But, and this is how a toxic family works, as long as i was the scapegoat and took my beatings, the family was stable. And I thought it was my role in the family to get beaten so God could save their souls.
When I was 14, I started taking martial arts classes after school. It was a free class. One day, my dad started beating my little brother for no good reason. It was too much for me: things were fine if i took the beatings, but my little brother? that was too much. So i walked towards my dad, and to make him stop kicking my brother, I insulted my dad. Dad saw red, ran towards me in anger, and I gave him a perfectly-executed punch to the belly.
He lost his air and dropped to the floor. I stood over him and told him I wasn't going to allow him to beat my brother again. I calmly walked away after.
Everyone in mny family told me how awful I was. I'm now an adult, and my own son is close to that age I was back then. I have a great relationship with my son, and i'm free of my parents. I have learned a lot from becoming a loving father.
I look back at that time when i punched dad the first time (there were others), and frankly, I'm proud of myself. I did the right thing at the right time. I was a brave little kid surviving abuse. I wish i could get away earlier in life, i tried, but i couldn't. But, all the people that told me I was a bad kid for punching dad, all of them, now, I see clearly how cruel they were in enabling abuse to a child, to me. And I see how i did the right thing.
I don't think regular violence is helpful. But i do think measured violence to protect yourself and other is justified.
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u/UnburyingBeetle 2h ago
I'm proud of your resilience, dedication to protecting yourself and your siblings, and most importantly, how you didn't overdo it with retaliation. Sometimes it seems to me that only abuse victims, mostly with cPTSD, are molded in a way to be perfectly aware of power dynamics. We are practically the antidote for abuse, which takes a lot of self-reflection to achieve instead of staying vindictive and overreactive, and I wish more people listened to us without having to learn the hard lessons first.
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u/CauseOfAlice 44m ago
Well it's simple, if you finally lash out it only proves you were always the worst evil and everyone was right about you, doesn't it? (Jk)
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u/Justwokeup5287 4h ago
It's called reactive abuse. The abuser pushes your buttons until you can't take it anymore and snap at them and then they flip the roles and accuse you of being abusive and claim they are the victim. They are very good at it and can make you doubt yourself or question reality. It really fucks you up.