I should clarify about the love part.
I would equate it to Stockholm Syndrome. I guess its like pets. They don’t have anywhere else to turn :(
Edit: fawning is probably the closest to the answer I was looking for
we don’t. well i don’t. it’s individual, but you loaded the question, so it’s hard to answer it correctly
Truth.
There is no requirement that you do. I’m completely unsure why people believe that you must allow shitty human beings in your life because they are family. Fuck that! Allow people in your life who make your life better. If that’s family, that’s great, if it’s not family that’s completely ok also.
Sooooo, I have a ton of info here, but I’ll keep my point short and sweet.
Depending on the age, we HAVE to.
Because rejecting a parent is death. You’ll find that 7 year olds will make excuses for and defend abusive parents, because rejecting a parent is rejecting safety, housing, food etc….
And while that may be less true when you’re 18, some of that programming never leaves you, even if it should.
… so it just becomes a personal tragedy.
I’d argue that your mind is learning what love it at that age. However you are treated by your caretakers is what you believe is love because we are born with no definition so that we can adapt to whatever circumstances. Adopting your family’s schema on love, when you age out of that family, you’ll find yourself in a similar situation.
As evidence, most adults in abusive relationships were abused as children. People often ask why adults stay in abusive relationships that are clearly terrible from the outside expecting practical reasons, like finances or kids. In reality, the victim will likely fall into another abusive relationship if they left because that’s what they think love is. Adults that were raised in non-abusive households would have left at the first red flags, whereas the adults raised in abusive households would find those red flags as signs they are loved. To them, they’re not red flags; they’re green flags. It isn’t after a string of these relationships or a really bad one that they seek help to change this pattern. The path is hard and burdensome because they have to tear down what they unconsciously learned and re-raise themselves without the guidance of a parent.
Same thing happens with the abusers, but they took on the identity of the abusive parent. They feel that love is allowing them to control and devalue their partner by whatever means. These people have much less chance of recovery because they don’t see a reason to change. If their relationships fail, then in their mind, it’s the victim’s fault. The abuser’s only lessons are how to change their abuse strategies so that victims don’t leave.
In conclusion, it’s not only that the child can’t leave. It’s that they’re completing a major developmental stage: learning what love is. They have no other options because we are designed that way.
Also entirely valid.
It’s been difficult for me. I find understanding helps a lot.
I view a lot of the abuse and family violence that I both experienced and witnessed, as a sort of generational shame and resentment, partially due to poverty and Catholicism. Coupled with jealousy of people born into more privilege who lived in our community. And a healthy dose of substance use to cope with the above feelings, primarily in the shape of alcohol, but also a lot of stimulant abuse in the family.
It helps a lot that my father has softened quite a bit. I don’t know that he’s completely changed in the sense of understanding how he has hurt people. But he seems to treat his current wife well, and with all of the male children out of the house the cycle of abuse seems to have stopped. And he has acknowledged how he’s hurt me when I’ve brought it up, at least generally. And been supportive and not abusive since I turned 18.
I’ve also had to do a lot of personal work, a lot of self-discovery. And a lot of work with an excellent trauma therapist using IFS and EMDR, along with a meditation practice at home.
And all of that said it’s a process. Sometimes my trauma gets triggered and I’m right there as a 12-year-old pissed off at him again. Which is to say give yourself some grace too.
I appreciate this, particularly for the IFS-informed aspect. I feel like IFS is gonna be an increasingly mentioned modality
Yeah it’s really effective. And becomes a practice in its own right of self-care. It’s also one of the modalities MAPS is using in MDMA treatment protocols.
There’s parallels in my Buddhist practice. Which is in the plum village tradition. Thich Nhat Hanh uses language like embracing the anger with your mindfulness and holding it like a mother would hold a crying infant. So, while the technical language is different it can be very similar to the IFS process and the two help inform each other for me. Compassionate inquiry is another one I’ve heard of but not studied. Which also has strong parallels.
Sometimes I catch myself just holding space while two parts have a loving conversation with each other. Which is a nice change from always being at war with myself.
fight, flight, freeze and FAWN are reactions to trauma / abuse. If a parent is abusing a child, children don’t really have any other immediate option other than to fawn. They don’t know to call the police, they can’t fight back or run away.
I made a post talking about my personal experience.
This post is more of a safety check. As a couple of other people pointed out you don’t have to. And if the abuse is continuing, focus on your safety first.
I didn’t speak to my father for 6 years. When he came back into my life, I think he understood that he couldn’t take the relationship for granted. And that if he treated me like shit, I would never talk to him again.
I don’t know that he really changed. But he does respect my boundaries now. Even if it’s more out of fear of the consequences than compassion for me. And trying to understand and forgive has helped me to develop more compassion.
But I had stopped the cycle of abuse by setting a firm boundary with him. And that had to happen before any sort of trust could be rebuilt. And to be honest, that was his job. He needed to respect my boundaries to earn my trust. Trust is earned it’s not given, after all. And without safety and trust, love can’t flow.
So yeah, don’t put it on yourself either. You are the victim of abuse. Restorative justice, such as making amends, rebuilding trust, and ultimately hoping that love can be there again, that’s the job of the person that did the damage.
Its sad it takes us being fully independant and able to pull away in an enforceable way for them to get the message that they’re not god and they are not omnipotent as far as we are involved.
Its like: why the fuck did you have us if you weren’t ready to take that on and even so, why couldn’t you fucking leave us alone in lieu of all the active abuse and enforced profiting off our labor and suffering.
I would choose neglect 10/10 if i tmean they left me the fuck alone and didn’t interfere in my being as ok as I could make myself given the circumstances
Yeah for real.
I’m so grateful I had someplace to go to. My stepdad was not great either but he was much easier to cope with than my father. And my mom is my role model for compassion in this world.
Unfortunately in my case the cycle of abuse continued with my stepbrother when my dad remarried. Which is why I have doubts about him really getting the message. And my stepbrother ended up moving out when he was 17 and couchsurfing through the rest of high school.
Anyway, I made a edit to my post above. I just wanted to point out that we are the victims of abuse. Restoring the relationship is on the shoulders of the person that caused the damage to the relationship right. It’s up to them to make amends and rebuild trust. And without rebuilding trust there can’t be love. So, it’s really not our job.
Finding compassion and understanding for everyone can still be really helpful though in that it can lead to deeper self understanding. Which requires kind of stepping back and looking at the factors that contributed to the cycle. But that doesn’t mean you need to let an abusive person into your life. Or feel warmth towards them. Even if they do try to make amends, it’s completely acceptable to just not have the spoons to deal with it.
the “love” part is - as always - difficult to define. its a word widely abused by those who abuse in other ways anyway, while in non-abuse circumstances, “love” is kind of a word without clear definition. In some aspects this is very similar to love itself - as love has many ways and facets to it that can vary greatly - okay, but that possibly is only a thought fed by a lack of a more precise language and overall use of way too generic words.
A young child that is abused might not have experienced love in its short lifetime, yet it might use the word it once heared in different context out of just trying to get word meanings - that is learning to speak - or trying to figure out what could stop the abuser from abusing it, while their abusers might personally use the word “love” instead of “abuse” because abusing others - for the abuser - might be the one thing which makes them feel something that most closely matches what others say about how love feels. For the kid, love then is a wierd word with very contradicting meaning, which in turn would be said to be so by nearly all adults, but mostly for other reasons. Please try to be more precise when talking about serious love questions about abusive contexts =) let me now do a step aside to the literally cold part of the world. One knows snow and ice, but i once read in a documentation that some culture in an icy region has 32 words for different types of ice and snow for their daily use and i assume that this happened due to the need of definition what type of snow to expect ‘over there’, or maybe “tomorrow” or in discussions where to settle or how to reach a site… that is having only one word that has to fit-them-all yet beeing so important and prone to be abused(abuse of the word here) it seems to me that the lack of words for defining a bit more precisely if it is loving like a (non-abusive) mother loving like a real friend loving sth like an enthusiast … could probably have a slightly bigger role in the overall problem than anticipated in general.
but yes, the brain is programmable, you do it when learning to ride a bicycle. Social programming may work differently, but is also possible. See how many people are trained like apes to always shout how great their country is, how civilized etc they are, yet if you really look it, all the lies just stinc horribly and that so called civilisation is very far away from beeing civilised. yet all the programmed apes prodly shout the greatness does not even exist there, but maybe it exists in their dreams (only)…
but now to answer the question with what i personally think:
while the mind is still developing to actually come into existance, conciousness still is a rare visitor as it comes into play and drifts away again without having a way to make it stay, one has only few things randomly choosen that can be directly remembered and huge parts of time inbetween conscious moments which start with a fast-forward in time while the inbetween is like the memory of a bad dream, blurred, not in order etc, but yet is the actual reality consciousness then stepped into. Stepping in of not yet developed consciousness may also have an incontrollable timing of stepping in-and-out, making decisions very urgend to do before blurrtime starts again and consciousness stepsl out. While not having consciousness at hand alltime, one can - during conscious times - only act or even think so little until unconscious time of “instinc-only” starts again. Again in nonconcious time contra-abuse actions cannot be performed or even thought of. body screams in pain, making the abuser causing more pain to victim which causes body to scream more until finally passing out. however thinking how to get out is only available in moments when the currently developing consciousness actually steps in again which can be quite short and not so easy to predict when that happens or when it ends again.
In later stages where consciousness - while not fully developed - at least is nearly alltime available -that is until passing out of course- actions can be adjusted to like not(!) crying in pain when waking up from passing out (while still beeing abused though) so to disrupt this specific downward spiral of screaming-is-punished-by-more-abuse.
In later stages when beeing able to observe the little hints of psychological instabilities of the abusers and their “abuse triggers” a “profile” becomes visible -that is when the victim has sort of a years long running statistics about that broken abusers “personality” not because the victim wants to make statistics but because of intentionally forgetting things is just not yet available to the under-stress-developing personality / brain functions of the victim as same as also intentionally remembering things (in general or circumstances related) too is a not yet available brain function. Also some parts of a more developed brain hide horrible experiences from consciousnes while other parts try to reach the memories to not only complete development but also to maybe find solutions to get out of the danger by analyzing memories of what happened when and why, when did it stop and maybe what caused the stop so one can start to handle it somehow. So it all forms a rather horrible yet “luckily incomplete” statistics done under stressfull fight against oneself then later called maybe hust “experience” or trauma etc. while the victim should learn to cope and handle and develop its own body or brain functions or even personality, to prepare for life, it is >500% overload-occupied with learning to cope with the junkyard of the abusers “personality” to prevent the small quantum fluctuations in the inbalances of the abusers psycholigical radioactive mess to avoid at least passing out due to abuse. trying to prevent the abuse is then the only available way of trying to survive, which is also instinct driven and surviving is n1 priority of the child, that is if course unless the child develops suicidal thoughts as a result of abuse. If and only if the victim somehow survives this mentally and becomes capable of doing the splits (mind, not sports) it is then eventually able to try to analyse how it could be possible and plan ahead solving the problem by maybe leaving forever or maybe finding other solutions, beeing on a constant lookout for what might bring security instead of learning to live or enjoying life let alone build up his life. Children don’t know what possibilities society in general offers or the risks child"care" offices pose to them (neither the other way around). They only rely on that little they know which is only their own experience and the “experience” of all ancestors combined and inherited in “instincts”, which are both unreliable in such cicrumstances: instincts are sort of predictable by adults and often abused by abusers thus bad to rely on in an abusive context when still a child. The own experience is still very little, likely poisoned by abusers and logic (brain instinct?) also needs all relevant variables to make good decisions while the lack of experience causes a lack of knowing what variables would be relevant or do exist at all also again likely beeing poisoned by abusers. Decisions are made out of the visible(!) possibilities which are likely also intentionally reduced overall by abusers for this very reason maybe by cutting the cholds connections to others, telling the child that those neigbours were very evil persons etc.
Some types of abusers intentionally destroy their victims believe in themselves. this makes it very hard or impossible for the victim to get out on his own, sometimes the victims mind may even start to think (what narcisists heavily work on to achieve) that the current abusive situation was the best possible outcome of their life, which then stops the “want” of leaving the abusive context as result of the psycoligical trap the abuser intentionally layed.
Also leaving abusive circumstances always is risky, and one should be thoughtful about risky decisions in general, right? Obviously abusers already are ok with substancially harming the victims body, mind, life and soul. Also they usually fear to face consequences (not sociopath or psychopath they don’t fear consequences), some would rather completely destroy the life of their victim than facing the consequences of their actions. Narcisists would probably make the friends of the victim believe the narcisist was the victim and the victim was the offender, deliberately destroying all friendships A sociopath would probalby cause unimaginable damages of any type to the victim not preventing even damage to himself, while a psychopath would maybe kill the victim for any reason including removal of evidences. Considering all of this does not make “leaving” abusive situations an easygoing task but a decision that can possibly and realistically end very horrible. Additionally victims might fear to get similar punishments from others when telling the truth so in fear might not even tell the truth when help would really be at the tip of their nose. Then saying weird things could be such an instinct kicking in and maybe not(!) a thoughtful decision. Saying such things (out of trained fear) that protect the abuser or even add insult to the victim itself (as trained by the abuser that the victim always has to insult and calling itself beeing responsible for all bad things or face even worse punishing) might also affect the victim to start to believe really untrue thing about itself. Most people struggle to get out if a single devils-circle, but what if a second circle was added?
this is part 1…
Often children that are rescued are taken out immediataly and irrevocably for their security, this is done due to sometimes very realistic dangers to their life as well as to protect them from manipulation. Without such external help, a victim would have to do all alone what police in groups with lots of money sometimes struggle to accomplish. keeping kids safe (and that is true even when police does not have child abusers in their mids) is not always easy.
They don’t have anywhere else to turn :(
yes, i think that very often they have nowhere to turn to, and partly this is intentionally deployed by the abusers like cutting contacts with everyone that the child might be willing just to talk to so that some few words could reveal what really happens.
Also by schools that report kids bad behaviour to parents (which in general is seen somewhere between unproblematic and good, but to the abused child, the school working hand in hand with the abuser, does not help with anything). But the hope to “leave forever once grown up” can help do the (mental) split (possibly there are other solutions like living in fantasy worlds or such or combinations) But leaving for real also has(!) to wait until the abusers are not officially “responsible” for the victim any more, otherwise gov could make sure that the situation gets even worse and this is a very realistic horrifying danger to the victim and regularily happens too. Having to wait means a child of i.e. 5 years may have to decide to wait until it is like 18 years old to actually be able to do the escape it so badly needs to develop its own life, this means it would have to decide to wait another 3times of its current lifetime/age just to securely be able to leave for real and start with developing its own life while the abusers have plenty of time to go on damaging the victims life, body, mind and soul. Also please be aware that countries exist where government is running (as in organising, financing and protecting from any justicial consequences) projects that involve getting hands on helpless kids, handing over those helpless kids to known previously convicted pedophile sex abusers (explicitly selected because(!) of the criminal record as a pedo sex abuser…), then protecting the abuser as well as the knowledge about the explicit handover “to a selected known child abuser” from the public knowledge while presenting “protecting the child” as the official reason for not making details public or even investigating how suizidal (i.e.) that kid actually is.
That victims in general should seek help in such official child"care" facilities (which were the ones known to do the handover to the abusers) would not only be a slap in their face but could also might pose other serious threats to them. Already knowing a little bit how to handle and prevent worse abuses by that first abuser but beeing faced with a new unknown “parent” that is abusive too but maybe in other ways, is a huge risk and might get them in additional trouble just because they would have to start try protecting themselves but again with no knowledge about the new threat they are confronted with.
“Officially” stopped (as in “a single one” of those child"care" offices has only stopped doing the handovers) projects tend to go on very long (just look how long we still have pirates on the seas despite the british crown and others took back those “letters of marques” once payd by a gov, a legalized crime will go on for centuries especially if the abusers happen to be protected by gov) From that stopped “handover helpless childs to convicted pedophile sex abusers” project (kentler “experiment”) up until now AFAIK not a single child has been rescued so far (thus the project continues with happy abusers and likely suicidal thinking victims)
So in some lesser civilized countries (which usually thrive to call themselves the most civilized…) the official childcare much more looks like a real trap to face even more abuse.
Some abusers build psycological traps for their victims like offering help but turn it into desaster then making the child (or even adults) responsible for any bad outcome (wich might as well be preparedly forged bad outcomes by the abusers. mind control bastards are in fact evil). Such experience could harm the victims overall acceptance of ‘help’ from anyone, effectively preventing offered true help from beeing accepted.
Now say what to choose where an abused child “should” turn to “in general” and how the help has to be organised and offered to those children to actually help.
Social workers often say that every abusive situation is very special while at the same times the schemes are often very similar.
No matter what, the solution is never easy unless the abuser dies by a true accident or real health issues and luck lets the child find (luck no2) someone really trustworthy - no matter by which way. When thinking of humans and eternal life the point of abusers never dying is the one point where i would say if abusers could also live forever in case that humanity in general could, then it would be better humanity in general could not live forever.
But also love IS part of human beeings, loving someone else makes us feel better and also heal a bit, pple say that sharing comes back twice and i think this is part of it. We humans do need to care for someone else or we get illminded, maybe feel the need of becoming richer and richer, more powerful and even more powerful every day, may it be in politics or in controlling other peoples lifes or minds effectively abusing them, becoming an abuser or such) that is loosing ground in our own minds and loosing real control over ones own life then sometimes raises the need to control others instead if that seems more easy or maybe more realistic or maybeveven pleasant, i don’t know. Maybe the love given by abused victims to their abusers is just that, keeping themselves sane, even if that sounds insane by itself, but given the circumstances sometimes could seem to be the smalles loss while loosing a whole life but just “not yet” every day :( which i see as a whole-life torture.
Thats about the main parts of what i think why, not a single reason but a bunch of maybe’s one worse than the other.
this is part 2 of 2
I think it’s because we are designed with a somewhat blank idea of what love is. We are born with a system that will become love, but we are born with it undefined. It’s similar to how we are born with a need for food, but not our culinary culture. It is during our formative years that we learn what love is just like we learn what delicious food is. Btw, in Spanish, when a kid doesn’t like to eat a specific food, it’s said that they haven’t learned to eat it yet. Back to the topic, the part that does come predefined is that we are to attach to our caregivers. Thus, we don’t leave them because we are designed to not leave them and have them teach us love.
Another issue is that as children, we don’t know we are being abused. What we’ve experienced in our families is all we know. From the perspective at this age, that’s just how life is. There’s no reason to leave.
Once we start realizing that not everyone goes through our experiences and that there are much nicer ways of relating to family, we can start recognizing that our familial situation is terrible and we want it to be different. The issue here is that there are only two options. Either you suffer the bad parts of the abuse while surviving on the breadcrumbs, or you lose any possibility of ever having a childhood family. The person basically has to decide to lose a major part of life. That is an immense amount of grief to endure, and they have to do it without the support of family. In these situations, the victim usually just kind of learns to manage the relationship unless there is a major catastrophic event that forces a decision. Otherwise, they’re learning how to overcome the frequent but comparatively tolerable difficulties. You’ll hear them say things like, “My dad is cool as long as you don’t expect him to…” or, “I love my mom, but I know not to…” They’re consolations to salvage their one opportunity. The decision is then to either (a) take a humongous hit by losing childhood family or (b) learn to deal with the most recent difficulty. The latter is much easier to brunt.
tl;dr: We don’t know it’s abuse. Instead, we are taught abuse is love. We are designed by birth to attach to our parents. And once we figure out it’s abuse, it’s a terribly difficult lose-lose decision to make where one option is addressing a recent issue and the other is nuclear.
Who you love is ultimately up to you. Some people still have love for their parents despite strictness, others might place the bar lower than you describe. That isn’t to say I encourage physical discipline, I’m only saying people have different priorities. I probably faced what people today would call an unacceptable category of discipline, but either way was and am too distracted by how I mention society treats me to care.
sarcastically.
