I'm not sure how successful I've been. At times I think I do alright. At times... Things turn to crap rather. I don't expect I'm doing much better or much worse than people doing alternative strategies...

To talk about a gorse bush *as* a gorse bush rather than a weed isn't really to deny any facts about gorse bushes. One can even say that some people prefer not to have gorse bushes around without calling gorse bushes 'weeds'. Similarly, to talk about the names my mother called me and the fact that she hit me etc really isn't to deny any facts about my childhood. So... I guess I'm not sure that I am denying anything... We have choices about how to describe the same events (the same event can be described in many different ways).

The usual way of understanding things is that:
Event -> Victimization
Where it is meant to be an objective, non-evaluative fact that someone who has been subjected to those events / experiences *will* feel victimized.
I think that sometimes things go like this:
Event -> Label event as 'abuse' -> Victimization
Where here the idea is that there is a choice about whether one labels the event 'abuse' or not and whether one labels it abuse or not has an impact on whether / how much one feels victimized.

Ian Hacking on 'the looping effects of social kinds'. The thought is that people who are categorized in certain ways make their behaviour conform to the stereotype of the way they are categorized. The categorizations that we employ have a certain amount of self fulfilling prophecy to them... If we don't categorize people in certain ways then they wouldn't behave in such a way that met the stereotype.

E.g., Hysterical seizures were common when clinicians expected that (and categorized patients based on their expectation). Dissociative fugues were common when clinicians expected that... Split or dual personality was common when clinicians expected that... multiple personalities were common when clinicians expected that... multiple personality got bound up with 'child abuse' when clinicians expected that (and people started 'remembering') You can look in patterns of 'epidemics' of certain mental health issues over time as those categories e.g., 'hysteric', 'fugue', 'double', 'multiple', 'abuse victim' opened up different ways of being (or expressing distress) at different points in history. Nobody in developed western nations developed the syndrome of being possessed by a wild pig because that is not a legitimated 'disorder' in developed western nations. Many people in the gururumba tribe experience this 'disorder', however.

I understand feeling hurt... Feeling powerless... Feeling terror... Feeling isolated... Feeling lonely... Feeling despair... I have felt a lot of those things. I guess... I still don't see what work labeling the events that resulted in my feeling that way 'abuse' adds to things...