I’ve put in my profile that I’m a survivor of emotional abuse, but it’s a funny kind of set up I’ve had. For me the sense of emotional abuse arises so much more from an absence of things than active abuse (though I got a fair share of that in later years!)

I have real problems convincing myself that the way things were in the past actually constitutes abuse - because it was all about things that I didn’t get, things that weren’t said, done, given. So my early past is more or less about things like negation and invalidation and being ignored and being made to experience myself as not counting, not mattering, unacceptable, unlikeable, worthless you name it.

I was wondering how others deal with this absence of things - that makes it so hard to point to something and say ‘yes see that’s why I’ve ended up like this’, it’s like there’s nothing concrete that you can pin down just a big nothing. And it’s even harder to blame anyone for it, to be able to say ‘no that wasn’t right, that shouldn’t have happened’ because to all intents and purposes NOTHING happened.

Anyone else know what I’m on about here?

Torn Mind