Internalising abuse

[Ecdysis]

I have C-PTSD from childhood abuse in trauma and in 2016 I got re-traumatised in an abusive relationship.

I had previously been soooo careful, to never get involved in an abusive relationship - childhood traum had been a huge warning to steer clear of further abuse. But in this case, I didn’t see it coming, no matter how cautious/ vigilant I was.

Anyway, I ended up getting out of the relationship once it turned abusive and initially I thought I’d “gotten out in time” before much damage had been done. But it turned out not to be the case. Although I did get out “early”, it did a lot of damage to me psychologically and led to a whole sh*t ton of early childhood trauma, that had previously just been laying dormant, to unravel and become activated. The abuse and trauma in 2016 messed me up in new ways that I didn't even know were possible and ever since I've 100% internalised the abuse and have left the abusive inner critic unchallenged and bought in to everything it was saying. A fawn response. maybe?

Since then, this has been one thing I’ve really struggled with, and which didn’t happen to me after the trauma I experienced in childhood. With the childhood trauma, I never really “internalised” it the way that often happens. I never thought it was my fault, I didn’t think I was bad for it happening to me, I didn’t blame myself, etc. That was very helpful for my recovery.

The abusive adult relationship, however… I fully had that response to it… I don’t know why or how it happened, but I fully internalised it, thought it was all my fault for not having realised earlier what was going on and not getting out even earlier, thought that there was something wrong with me, thought I was to blame for it happening to me… A huge mess…

Because this didn’t happen to me after childhood trauma, it was totally confusing to me why it happened in this situation… And I had no idea what to do to stop it.

All attempts at therapy have been practically useless since then, because I just can’t shift that “internalising” thing of thinking I’m useless, I’m bad, everything’s my fault, I’m worthless, nothing I do is right, nothing good will ever happen to me again, etc etc.

My brain totally shut down, I stopped functioning, I've just barely been existing, clinging on to life by a bare shred, and letting the internalised abuse and the abusive inner critic's yelling wash over me and have felt too weak to do anything about it.

It's felt like a curse I couldn't break free from, I've felt doomed, I've felt like this was something I simply couldn't fight, couldn't overcome, couldn't heal from.

I think I may be getting to a point in the therapy where things are starting to turn around a bit… And I think this “internalising” thing is something I really need to work on because it’s totally screwing me up and screwing my life up.

Can I view it as a specific C-PTSD symptom spiking out of control? One that I'd never encountered with childhood trauma? But one that is treatable?

I think it might make a huge difference if I can shift my thinking to view it that way and to start being pro-active about it and taking normal, healthy therapeutic steps to deal with this specific C-PTSD symptom.

I'd be grateful for any advice in how people have overcome this "internalising the abuse" and "self-blame" dynamic. I'm finding it so insiduous and all my previous PTSD-coping-skills aren't helping, because I've never been confronted with this specific issue before.

I'm grateful for any pointers to helpful resources, because this seems like such in insurmountable, unshiftable core belief to me...

Thank you.

 

[Movingforward10]

The thing about core beliefs is that they totally can be changed.
Some of mine have been changed in an instant when I became aware of them and some took/take a lot of hard work as it is so ingrained.

The way you write about your responses to childhood trauma, to me, read quite emotionally detached. It reads as though you were the adult then. And that now you're seeing your responses to the 2016 trauma as the child response.
I don't know if that makes sense or is helpful/unhelpful.


What changes core beliefs and specifically the self blame?
For me:
Telling me story as if it was another child and then being able to see I deserved compassion and not blame.
Understanding the options available to me and the choices I took based on what had gone on before me.
Understanding the abuse and it's impact.
And catching myself with negative self talk.
And eventually shifting the responsibility of the abuse on the abusive people.

 

[Ecdysis]

The way you write about your responses to childhood trauma, to me, read quite emotionally detached. It reads as though you were the adult then. And that now you're seeing your responses to the 2016 trauma as the child response.
I don't know if that makes sense or is helpful/unhelpful.

Yeah, I agree. It makes a whole lot of sense. It's still difficult to change it tho.

Telling me story as if it was another child and then being able to see I deserved compassion and not blame.
Understanding the options available to me and the choices I took based on what had gone on before me.
Understanding the abuse and it's impact.
And catching myself with negative self talk.
And eventually shifting the responsibility of the abuse on the abusive people.

These are probably very useful - to my depression brain they sound like they work in theory/ on paper, but that they won't work in my case - lol, depression brain and core belief crap in full force. It feels like I will be chipping away at an iceberg sized problem with a tiny little ice pick and make close to zero impact. But again, I realise from a rational point of view that that's depression-brain thinking. I do have to invest in this work. My previous experience from trauma therapy is that initially it feels impossible/ like an endless task and that you need to plough away at it for ages with little results, but that eventually there's a turning point and suddenly you get a bigger return on your investment. Kind of like planting a seed and at the beginning all you do is tend to it (water it, care for it and you see zero growth) but once the seed germinates, voila, you start to see really strong, vibrant growth and the input/ result ratio really starts to shift and you can start reaping the rewards of all your effort.

 

[Movingforward10]

It's totally doable.

A mantra my T has had with me has been "choose another belief". That it was/is a choice for me to be stuck in a core belief and what is preventing me from changing it? What do I lose from changing my belief?
All annoying at the time, but true!

 

[Friday]

Can I view it as a specific C-PTSD symptom spiking out of control? One that I'd never encountered with childhood trauma? But one that is treatable?

Yep.

Zero childhood trauma, here.

But? I can still blame myself for shit that happens/happened thousands of miles away… because? A lot of reasons.

- Control Freak.
- Sideways Self Confidence (If I was there I could have…)
- Magical Thinking / Rumination (The land of “What IF?” Ain’t a real place. So I try not to spend time there. Because I very, very easily can.)
- CD/CB “If it’s my fault? I can fix it.” <<< Nope! Not always true, but if it’s someone else’s fault I can’t do Jack about it, and? Control freak. I fundamentally WANT things to be my fault, so I can do something about it.
- A few other things.

I have to reality check myself really, REALLY hard, to knock myself out of those defense mechanisms.

As an adult? YES. I had choices, and I’ve made some bad ones, so I can ABSOLUTELY take some of the blame for my being IN some f*cked up shit. But it’s only partial blame. And. That. Is. The. Part. PTSD. Does. Not. Like. PTSD wants it all or nothing, black & white. It has reeeeeeal difficulty with shades of grey. Like recognizing that staying in an abusive relationship? Is f*cking stupid. But? The abusive asshole holds about 96% of the credit for the abusive relationship. Because they’re the abusive one. Staying in the relationship is my fault. Being abusive is theirs. Remove the abuse, and what do you have? A relationship! So my 4% of the blame is for… being normal. Okay. That doesn’t sit well, but it is, what it is.

Not accepting the blame for evils others do?

Is WICKED hard, as a control freak.

But as someone who wants to be able to put things right? Voila. I DO have that power.

Negotiating with myself? To FIND the grey? Is hard. But worth it.

 

[DarkVixen]

I too had this internalizing it. My childhood was also a messy one but I think instinctively you understand as a child that you literally have no power and that everything is controlled by an adult, in one way or another.

As an adult it is hard to accept that you are not 100% in control of your own life. The guilt and shame that I felt from my first abusive relationship was just overwhelming. What really helped me was learning about the victim triangle and how dysfunctional relationships fall into this pattern because for those of us with abusive childhoods we have already danced the dance of the victim triangle. So, its a very familiar dance to us. This helped me take responsibility for my own part but not in the way I was blaming myself but to understand why I played this part and what I needed to learn about myself so I could avoid doing that dance again. I say this from the fact I already had this knowledge when I again found myself in another victim triangle relationship. Only this time I could see my own behavior and it was still hard to get out of the relationship but this time I dont blame myself, I tried my hardest to be in a healthy relationship but when the other person refuses to see the dysfunction, you are basically on your own, which for blame is good cause I know I tried my best and thats all I could do.

 

[candlebar]

I have C-PTSD from childhood abuse in trauma and in 2016 I got re-traumatised in an abusive relationship.

I had previously been soooo careful, to never get involved in an abusive relationship - childhood traum had been a huge warning to steer clear of further abuse. But in this case, I didn’t see it coming, no matter how cautious/ vigilant I was.

It's impossible to foresee every possible danger, liar, and abuser. This would require omniscience. Thus, it is pivotal to go through life with an "immature rebellion"; I use quotes here because this is how most innocence and self-defense is framed in today's world toward adults who are abused; your survival instincts are treated as if you're being rebellious and selfish. One day you're 17 years 11 months and 30 days young a minor, the next you're an 18 year old more omniscient than God blaming others and having compassion, love, and kindness for yourself is viewed as a weakness esp. if you've been abused as a child and internalized pride at the strength you've had to muster to survive.

Abused children idealize adulthood, viewing it as their escape. When they reach adulthood they therefore believe they've crossed a threshold; but turning 18 is a cultural milestone into a new form of abuse, one where society has created an imaginary line of culpability. That is literally what being an "adult" means; it means society will now gaslight you and accuse you of being responsible for what happens to you. By definition that is what "becoming an adult means". It's not a biological change, a mental change, or a reality; it's a social agreement that the majority of society will now shamelessly unleash verbal and judicial abuse against you by the majority, without relent or remorse.

The very act of being labeled an adult is gaslighting; this is a social construct, a social contract — not a reality. If we have determined there is a difference between being 17.9999 years old vs. 18 — then that difference can only be quantified by social delusions about what this so-called difference is.

It is therefore very important you understand that the difference is specifically a social contract to blame you for your problems, and for society to essentially stop caring or treating you quite so humanely; this is the only possible way for there to be some difference between supposed "minor" status vs. "adult" status. It has to be a social agreement to swamp you with gaslighting about culpability and deservingness; whatever that is, and how it is perceived or enacted upon by the majority will be very subjective, nonetheless there will be a pattern underlying that subjectivity due to loose definitions about what "adulthood" means when specified fictitiously by "expert scientists", "religious authorities", and "law enforcement".

As this is in fact the case that "adulthood" is a social construct to treat you less humanely rather than an actual divine outline of reality and true culpability — then one has to know that children are developing a perception for about 18 years before they hit this threshold. For nearly 18 years you are observing subtle, extreme, overt, covert, subliminal, conscious, and unconscious definitions about this social construct.

Your brain therefore has your entire developmental years being indoctrinated into assuming that "adulthood" is a real thing, and that "culpability" is somehow defined by this fictional social construct rather than by some larger reality.

I personally find that many children are able to distinguish abuse, whereas young adults hit the haze because they have a lifetime of imagining consciously and unconsciously the horrors of being defined as an "adult". It's so ingrained in their mind that it inevitably has a horrific reality on their consciousness when they do become an adult.

Children who are abused might rationalize this logic by relying on society's invisible definitions of culpability. Society has largely agreed to label children as victims, and to vilify their abusers. Many children have seen enough movies, encountered enough programs in school, and spoke to enough adults to know that abuse is real and therefore develop a resilience against blaming themselves for all of it.

What happens when that rug is pulled out from under them? Well, nothing except that your resilience breaks down.

You've developed core beliefs programmed so subtly, so overtly, so directly and indirectly into you.

When you reach 18, these core beliefs that you're now responsible for what happens to you becomes a reality. While it isn't true, the social construct and the core beliefs that evolved at the depths of your upbringing in this society are essentially instinctual.
Society itself pulls the rug out from under you, so the depths of this programming coupled with the loss of protection and compassion from the majority (a social contract to define adulthood as "responsible for your own life") are now now your reality.

These are core beliefs. You grew up in the social construct.

Adults have developed resilience as a child because society protected them; now that they're not protected for most of the abuse, they blame themselves and buy into the "adulthood" construct. It's a social construct, and it's ingrained in our hearts and brains.

Of course you blame yourself. You were raised to believe being an adult means there is something universally different about culpability. You can't define it; it's someone else's world, a world of fluid democracy, oppression, monetized bullying, and uncertainty ... and you're just living in it.
By which definitions and social constructs can you fall back upon to feel like a victim again? It's a ghostly definition now as an adult; you never know if you are. Some people say you are, others say you aren't. You grew up believing adults have different responsibilities and experiences. You now have to pay your own bills or die on the streets.

The mercilessness of being treated as an "adult" (whatever that means, usually some version of a jerk nobody cares about but who still has to pay taxes or suffer & die) turns into a hyperbolic cumulative complex of increasing uncertainty, self-doubts and self-blame.

It makes perfect sense that being an adult makes you less resilient to abuse. Sadly, that's the opposite of what society is telling you; and that is why you are less resilient. Society gaslights adults and cares less about their problems, so therefore you lack that stronghold to say no.

Of course there's support groups like this, but we aren't God; we can't be there for you everywhere you go, live your life for you or restore the cumulative firsthand, secondary, and unending losses. At best we only possess whatever power you allow us to possess in validating your situation, your self-worth, your pain, and what it is you hopefully rightfully deserve. But why trust us? You don't even know us.

So it's a matter of faith; the fortitude of creating support and resistance. You'll never be as close to the "perfect victim" again as you were when you were a child ... So you're going to have know that there is a core weakness inside you that blames yourself much moreso than you did when you were child. The social construct of "childhood" vs. "adulthood" is ingrained into our entire childhood development. It's a neuropathway of core beliefs, much of which we imagined ourselves.

As children growing up we don't even know what it means to be an adult ... esp. as an abused child. So view it often as being strong, independent, wise, free from problems. We idealize it to survive the horrors of helplessness.
Part of being an abused child means being even less resilient to abuse as an adult, because we form a strawman in our minds of independence and strength in order to courageously chug through the pain. We await adulthood with trepidation, fear, and open arms even if it is subconsciously. We imagine ourselves free and prosperous, out of our situation and problems.

We fantasize about being powerful and "above the mess, out of the fog".

When we become adults, we therefore subconsciously become that imaginary scarecrow we created. We become the "adult above the mess"; if your parents were abusive or your family, you likely begin to question if they were right, because that scarecrow that kept you going is now being challenged and questioned.
"I thought i would be powerful ... above the problems ... above the mess, and loved." And yet, you aren't because society and adulthood are constructs. People remain the cruel bullies they were in high school, just better at gaslighting and hiding it, and often getting paid or photographed for being the biggest capitalist predators they could become. We watch narcissists and abusers rise to the tops of business hierarchies.
That scarecrow of hope, now our reality, shatters ... and worse there's no one there to pity us, or pay our bills.

We question it all, now; there are no more "milestones", we are the adults. Our brain might become afraid of growing older, or creates new "maturer" scarecrows we attain ... When we're 30 ... then 30 comes and it's the same problems. What happened? Where did I go wrong? The abuse is still there; I must be stupid, I must be to blame for it. Then 40, then 50 ... We keep changing the goal post, if only subconsciously.

You have to realize it's not your fault. You are a survivor, and always were; nothing has changed. The world is full of pricks, not just the ones from your upbringing. You face more abuse and challenges. If you were abused at home, you weren't raised to overcome problems — you were raised to believe the abusers are always right and that you deserve it. As the adult now, those beliefs become the unchanging core reality of your life; there is no more "I'm a child and there's a difference!" in your mind. That imaginary line that was drawn is gone now. So you are facing the core delusion that you've somehow become "the empowered adult who's always navigating and in control".

You aren't. You're the same person. It's not your fault, you couldn't see it coming; lies and abuse are usually fashioned to break through boundaries, that's why they're lies and abuse. Humans don't lie to alert your spidey senses, they lie to trojan horse some wicked agenda into your life. You can't be immune to it; but you can become better at recognizing lies sometimes, and understanding that a liar can't really be trusted because you'll never know when they're fully telling the truth all the time. That's what you can do; you can stop blaming yourself, and knowing it was meant to trespass through your radar rather than trail-blaze through your gates in ridiculous clown costumes. Lies, and abuse are meant to force themselves into your life covertly or overtly.

Nobody is immune to that. We can hopefully get into situations and circumstances to escape the sources of this, but wow is that not immediate unless you were born into so much wealth and inheritance that you can just fly away and buy a mansion in paradise anytime the world around you starts to burn.

The abusive adult relationship, however… I fully had that response to it… I don’t know why or how it happened, but I fully internalised it, thought it was all my fault for not having realised earlier what was going on and not getting out even earlier, thought that there was something wrong with me, thought I was to blame for it happening to me… A huge mess…

Nobody enters into a relationship because they want to be abused, lied to, tricked, disappointed, tortured and left blaming themselves feeling like garbage. So clearly you aren't to blame. If you fully knew this was going to be the consequence, you would have avoided it like the plague. There is nothing to internalize. Also, abusers and liars don't abuse because they want to be held accountable or are responsible people; they do it because they're careless (and I don't mean carefree, i mean careless). They lie because they feel entitled to dominate, manipulate, and get what they want. They lie to improve their own circumstances to the detriment/consent of others' knowledge of true reality.

Of course your abusers aren't going to apologize, ever admit to wrong-doing, or clarify the situation. No, it's not your fault, and no the abuser isn't going to be your healer. The liar isn't going to be your torchbearer.

Because this didn’t happen to me after childhood trauma, it was totally confusing to me why it happened in this situation… And I had no idea what to do to stop it.

Relationships are pivotal to remaining rooted in society and surviving. We often remain stunned, not wanting to make waves / create problems, and becoming the cheerleader of hope in bonds we invest in. Our time is money. Losing a relationship is the loss of trust, love, familiarity, years, time, work, laughter, shared memories, emotions, connections, and resources. It isn't trivial.

We do, sadly, cling to toxicity to avoid those losses and instead play the slot machine of life.

But you can break free, and cut your losses to avoid the unending pattern of pain and hardship. It's not just a possibility, it's reality; the cat will fight for its life once cornered. Hopefully you can learn to escape before you're cornered sooner. With time comes wisdom; with wisdom, comes better survival instincts and methods of investing our hopes, love, and resources. Such is life.

All attempts at therapy have been practically useless since then, because I just can’t shift that “internalising” thing of thinking I’m useless, I’m bad, everything’s my fault, I’m worthless, nothing I do is right, nothing good will ever happen to me again, etc etc.

It's difficult to trust someone paid to be our cheerleader. But the truth is that you know it, you knew it as a child, your inner child knows it ... You're that same 13 year old peering up at the cruel monster and knowing it's not your fault. Turning 18 didn't change that, it just pooled the social construct's wool over your eyes. Injustice, lies, abuse, and manipulation exist; it isn't your fault.

Therapists are paid because they agree to help others full-time. It doesn't mean they're all just yanking your chain for a paycheck. They're also surviving in this social system and have to pay bills, pay taxes, rent, etc.

Maybe open your heart a little, make sure you have the right therapist, and pull that wool back off your eyes. I know you can do this; you've made it this far. You didn't create the world; there's no magical "karma police" paid and running around in invisible uniforms coming after you. What happened isn't because you deserved it, did something in a past life, did something previously, or because you were stupid. It's because some selfish person wanted to do it, and they found someone who wasn't aware of that particular type of abuse or the damage it can do.

But you did get out, and you will do better to protect yourself. Wisdom is real; you are wiser. That's not a lie. Not everything is fair, and that's not an excuse for injustice but rather a compassionate acknowledgement that you were mistreated and that you do deserve and want better. You wouldn't be racking your brain or posting here if you didn't go through some real trauma and want your life to be better.