I know living through abuse isn’t a fucking competition, but I’d like to be able to tell myself, when the spectre of ‘BUT OTHERS HAD IT WORSE THAN YOU’ rises, “Yes, but what happened to you still fucking sucked” and have it somehow stick for good, rather than it being like a post-it note that I have to keep putting up again and again.
Tag: abuse
“listen… harry’s in trouble, and we could tell mum and dad, but I reckon we should just steal the flying car and go kidnap him in his muggle neighborhood, even though I’m 12 and you’re both 14 and this is a crime and the three of us cant drive”
“excellent”
This is bullshit.
Nobody in Harry’s life – no ADULT – ever did anything about the abuse he suffered at the hands of the Dursleys. Nobody did anything when they were told he was being starved, that there were bars on the windows, that they. Albus Fucking Dumbledore didn’t do anything about it.
Nobody in canon, or JKR herself in interviews or on Pottermore, even uses the word “abuse”. It’s all about how “the Durlseys treated him badly”. Nobody says abuse.
What Ron, Fred, and George did was nothing short of heroic. That they needed to do it is an indictment of every adult in Harry’s life, magical and non-magical alike.
@deadcatwithaflamethrower Need some back-up here because I’m hitting that point of “I want to set something on fire.”
I thought you did a pretty good job, actually. Even when adults are told about the conditions Harry was found in (literally IMPRISONED: remember, folks, the Dursleys were not going to let him go back to Hogwarts in book 2) nobody does anything. Nobody acts on the fact that a family literally imprisoned a child.
Someone I used to follow on LJ/DW was literally imprisoned by their parent. Nobody ever did anything. No one would believe them when they told other adults. No one wanted to believe it.
This shit happens and adults do nothing because it might interfere with their worldview that everything is just fuckin’ peachy…or someone in *power* that they respect/fear has told them not to interfere for the good of some cause/reason or another. That is one of the most terrifyingly realistic aspects of JKR’s books, but it’s glossed over by everyone who doesn’t believe that could ever possibly happen in real life.
And hey: there is more than one way to imprison someone.
(Aside from the fact that my mother locked the door and literally stood in front of it in an attempt to keep me from leaving the house once. Afterwards she pretended it had never happened.)
JK is actually on record (a radio interview, I think, but don’t quote me) as saying she doesn’t think the way Harry was treated by the Dursley’s was abuse.
That was the moment I lost all respect for her.
I do not care that she donated millions to charity, I care that she clearly thinks starvation and swinging a frying pan at a child’s head is an okay thing to do. That it’s okay to put bars on a child’s window to keep them in, and bolts the door shut.
@jabberwockypie Now I feel like setting something on fire too. *passes the chocolate and marshmallows*
Just … *SCREAMING* So. Much. Screaming and FIRE.
See, when I learn things like this, I also become somewhat Concerned about the person’s children. (Jude Watson has a daughter and considering the Jedi Apprentice stuff, I’m ALSO worried there.)
Do I think JKR would lock her kids in their rooms with bars on the window? Probably not, but if you’re not willing to admit that withholding food and is abuse, if you’re not willing to address emotional abuse and gaslighting AT ALL, trying to make a child hate themselves (like with what the Dursleys do with magic). I’m extremely concerned about what you think appropriate parenting looks like.
Frankly I also think it’s extremely irresponsible when your intended audience consists of children and teenagers. At some point somebody needs to say “This thing that happened to this character was wrong”. Because children who are being abused? we don’t KNOW. Or we don’t necessarily process it that way. It’s “not that bad” or it’s “It’s not like they’re beating me.” and every time it gets worse (the time my mother gave me a black eye), you move the goalposts of Not That Bad “It’s not like it’s ALL THE TIME”.
As an abuse survivour, let me tell you, this information got me through. Seriously. I knew this, and I knew if I survived my teenage years, my body would be new. Untouched. Mine and only mine.
What most people think causes homelessness:
- Poor money management
What actually causes homelessness:
- transphobia
- a racist criminal justice system
- the ‘war on drugs’
- health care and insurance costs
- the current federal minimum wage
- bankers being dicks
- no federal law protecting paid parental leave
- etc…
• mental illness stigma + lack of resources
– Real Estate becoming more and more inclined towards rich people quickly buying-and-selling (aka shadow flipping) houses in order to make exorbitant amounts of money and creating situations where empty houses are rampant in cities where homelessness is at record highs
– Landlords being bullies
Someone has to say it – DOMESTIC VIOLENCE.
Both spousal abuse and child abuse lead to homelessness. A large percentage of women and juveniles sleeping rough came from violent homes. And by violent, I mean all forms of violence – physical, sexual and emotional brutality.
no offense but this is literally the most neurotypical thing i have ever seen
Uhhhh… no.
This is what they teach you in therapy to deal with BPD and general depression.
When I got out of the hospital after hurting myself a second time, I got put into intensive outpatient program for people being released from mental hospitals as a way to monitor and help transition them into getting them efficient long-term care.
This is something they stressed, especially for people with general depression. When you want to stay at home and hide in your bed, forcing yourself to do the opposite is what is helpful. For me, who struggles with self harm- “I want to really slice my arm up. The opposite would be to put lotion on my skin (or whatever would be better, like drawing on my skin) the opposite is the better decision.” It doesn’t always work because of course mental health isn’t that easy, but this is part of what’s called mindfulness (they say this all the time in therapy)Being mindful of these is what puts you on the path to recovery. If you’re mindful, you are able to live in that moment and try your best to remember these better options.
I swear to god, I don’t get why some people on this website straight up reject good recovery help like this because either they a)have never been in therapy so don’t understand in context how to use these coping tactics. Or b)want to insist that all therapists and psych doctors are neurotypical and have zero idea what they are talking about. (Just so ya know, they teach this in DBT, the therapy used to help BPD. The psychologist who came up with DBT actually had BPD, so….a neurotypical women didn’t come up with this.)
I have clinical OCD and for me, exposure therapy–a version of “do the opposite”–has been fundamental. I’ve had huge improvement in the last year, but I’m 100% clear that if I hadn’t done my best to follow this protocol I’d be fucked. I have a lot of empathy for that moment when you’re just too tired to fight and you check the stove or you wash your hands or go back to the office at midnight to make sure the door is locked. But the kind of therapeutic approach outlined above has been crucial for me.
It’s hard to do. I’ve weathered panic attacks trying to follow this protocol. But I’ve gotten remarkable results. I was afraid to touch the surfaces in my house, okay? I was afraid to touch my own feet, afraid to touch my parrot–deliberately exposing myself to “contamination” has helped me heal. I can’t speak for people with other issues, but this has helped my anxiety and OCD.
I feel that tumblr, in an effort to be accepting of mental illness, has become anti-recovery. Having a mental illness does not make you a bad person. There is nothing morally wrong with having a mental illness anymore than more than there’s something morally wrong with having the flu. However, if you’re “ill” physically or mentally, something is wrong in the sense that you are unwell and to alleviate that you should try to get better. While there is not “cure” for mental illness, there are ways to get better.
There was a post on tumblr where someone with ADHD posted about how much you can get done when you focus and was attacked for posting about being “nuerotypical” – when she was posting about the relief she got from being on an medication to treat her illness.
I saw another post going around tumblr that said something along the line of “you control your thoughts, why not choose to have happy thoughts” which again was shot down as “nuerotypical” but while you don’t have control over what thoughts come into your mind, you absolutely can and should choose to have happy thoughts. In DBT we call this “positive self talk”.
I’m in DBT to help treat PTSD stemming from child abuse. The abuse and abandonment I experienced destroyed my self esteem and created a lot of anxiety over upsetting other people. DBT has taught me to recognize when my thoughts are distorting realty ‘no one likes you’ and answer back ‘plenty of people like you, you don’t need everyone to like you, especially if the relationship doesn’t make you happy’, to respond to the thought ‘I’m so worthless’ with ‘you’re really great and have accomplished something’
And it’s not easy to challenge your thoughts, it’s a skill that’s learned and it’s hard to force yourself to think something that doesn’t seem authentic or even seems wrong to think – it’s hard to be encouraging towards yourself when you hate yourself – but you force yourself to be aware of your thoughts and push back when you fall into unhealthy patterns
That isn’t “so neurotypical” that’s recovery.
Not shaming mental illness doesn’t mean shaming RECOVERY.
Pro-Recovery isn’t anti-disability.
Do not shame healthy behaviors as “neurotypical”.
Learning healthy behaviors and taking steps to treat mental illness and disorders including taking medication if that’s what works for you is important. You shouldn’t be ashamed if you have mental illness, but you shouldn’t say ‘well I’m not neurotypical therefor I can’t do anything to get better’ – while there is no cure for mental illness, there is a lot you can do to get better, to function better, to manage your mental illness and be safer, happier, and healthier for it.
I’m sort of on the fence here, because sure, there are things I can do as someone with depression/anxiety/PTSD to get myself out of negative patterns of behaviour and thought. These things are hard, almost always harder than just defaulting to how I feel and think without challenging them, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try.
BUT.
I am also an autistic person who probably also has inattentive type ADHD, and ignoring my body and mind telling me “okay, I need to leave now, I need to shut down for a while, I need to recharge, I need to get out of this environment” and pushing into areas of sensory and social discomfort CONSTANTLY is a great way for me to end up in meltdown, shutdown, and maybe even end up with a “hangover” for days where all I can do is sleep and watch TV. I was constantly told, as an undiagnosed autistic person, that these sensory and social limits didn’t exist, that “everyone else” was just fine, so these messages were fake and that I was just “shy” and “high strung” and needed to push myself. Scared in social situations? Do public speaking! and so on, and so forth. Neurotypical standards of what was resonable to “push through” resulted in periods of being housebound, temporarily nonverbal, and so anxious and depressed I couldn’t do anything. It absolutely tanked my self-worth. It made me disregard these warning signals my autistic brain gave me that could have helped me avoid burnout. Learning how to notice and respect these warning signals has been an incredibly difficult process, because ignoring them was reinforced so often, for the first twenty-five years of my life.
So, lists like this have their place, but for neurodiverse people, they are only useful if they have the self-knowledge about what is useful and what is going to be harmful. This is something I didn’t have until very recently, and something I still struggle with. It’s lists and advice like this that made me continuously force myself into situations that harmed me, and made me ruthlessly repress stimming and selfcare that may have helped me. Those stimming and selfcare behaviours didn’t conform with the list/advice, you see. They were particular to my neurotype, and were things I had to discover/rediscover for myself, because no professional or well-meaning non-professional ever knew they were needed, BECAUSE NONE OF THEM WERE MY NEUROTYPE.
So, yes, challenge negative behaviour and thought patterns.
And yes, it’s the most neurotypical thing I’ve ever seen.
Listen to your body and your mind and take care of your SELF. Because there is no ‘one size fits all’ for mental health.
Also, I have Feelings about ‘forgiveness’ being the advised ‘good’ thing for betrayal. This anchors in heavily with the way people treat victims/survivors of abuse.
You don’t get to decide that someone else who’s been abused in any way should ‘forgive’.
You never have to ‘be the better person’ and forgive those who hurt you.
You never have to listen to those who tell you if you don’t forgive your abuser, you’ll be living with that abuse for the rest of your life.
You never have to look at your abuse and say, “Actually, I feel okay with my past and what you did to me and have love and acceptance in my heart for it all, and forgive what you did.”
It is absolutely fine for you to live your life without forgiving.
But gosh, you think, won’t it make me a toxic, bitter ball of hatred, unable to process trauma and move on? That’s what all those well-meaning people tell me.
No.
Actually, what happens is you work out that your abuser is irrelevant. Gradually, you won’t think about them every minute, or every hour, or every day. Eventually, you’ll go longer and longer, until you barely think of them at all, and your life will be as full as anyone else’s of things that are not the abuse or abuser.
That’s where I’m at. And I never had to forgive my abuser to get there.
knitting in the dark 