[WikidPissah]

I have had a t tell me "that was abuse" when relaying childhood events to them. My response was always a . To me, it's not, it was just life in the Pissah family. I often hear people term the word abuse for much lesser things...frequently I think it is another one of those over-used therapy words, like "triggered".

So...what exactly is ABUSE? Does the abuser have to deliberately intend harm to the abusee? Can accidental things be considered abuse? If an old woman rear ends me and causes extensive damage to my neck and shoulders, is that abusive? If my great uncle calls me that nickname that he's called me for as long as I can remember, and it really bugs me...is that abuse? Is it abuse when a T just doesn't get it? Where do we draw the line?

I am dead serious here, I am trying to form a circle around the word.

The definition is as follows, it seems to imply a deliberate action.

abuse

— vb
1. to use incorrectly or improperly; misuse
2. to maltreat, esp physically or sexually
3. to speak insultingly or cruelly to; revile
4. ( reflexive ) to masturbate

— n
5. improper, incorrect, or excessive use; misuse
6. maltreatment of a person; injury
7. insulting, contemptuous, or coarse speech
8. an evil, unjust, or corrupt practice
9. See child abuse
10. archaic a deception

[Raging Quiet]

Abuse, for me, means harmful intent and not respecting boundaries. Anything that hurts the soul, body, mind, environment and doesn't respect the person.

[2or3things]

I don't know. I have a tendency to see things as "just the way it was" and not "abusive" per se. But I think that has as much to do with me and what I can take on as far as how I frame my past. Not sure if that applies for you or not.

Still, I do wonder about intent, and I'm not at all sure how much intent matters. At the risk of going all former English teacher on this, I wonder if it isn't a grammar issue. I think something someone does can be abusive without someone intending to abuse.

I mean, if a person does intend to cause harm, for sure that would seem like abuse/would be abusive. But say there's some issue that in some way prevents the abuser from knowing s/he's being abusive...maybe cultural differences or mental illness or coming from an abusive past her/himself. Whatever s/he is doing may be experienced as abuse/as being abusive by the victim, and the "abuser" could be clueless about it the entire time, thinking it's just "normal" or whatever.

Triggered is over used? And abuse maybe over used? I wonder what is going on for you to feel that way.

I also feel the word 'abuse' gets overused, but maybe that's just me as well. When people talk about a boss or a co-worker or whatever being abusive, I know that the picture it creates in my mind is pretty extreme in terms of what it would take for ME to call people in those positions 'abusive.' When the person then talks about the boss' behavior (or co-worker's or whoever), it sometimes seems to me that what the original person is saying is that they do not like the boss or the boss is being discourteous. I think there is a difference between being discourteous, obtuse, or just not nice, and being abusive.

Because of the nature of this forum, I think the way we each use language and define it is going to bump up against other people's sensitivities sometimes. It will be nice to just discuss it and figure out where people stand.

For me, as I said, I dislike the word abusive being used unless there is a true, relatively large, problem. Not nice or not getting it does not count as abuse. For me, there must be some intent to harm, and actual harm involved.

And for me, I resent it when people will (on rare occasions) say they wish they were abused, or one person mentioned wishing he or she were dissociative. If a person had any real understanding of what it is to be abused, or the level of abuse that is involved in triggering a dissociative issue, there is no way the person would ever say that. Many of us who have been abused, particularly to the point of triggering a dissociative issue, will get cranky sometimes about this issue. Or maybe it's just me. Dunno.

I think people are confusing an Internet forum with RL. Are we talking about people's private therapy sessions, or posts on a support forum? If someone thinks words are seeming over used, I'd suggest stepping away from your compute screens.
We can never know what goes on in private ind sessions in real life. We have no business either.
Step-away-from-your-screen-now!

[unaluna]

Originally Posted by _Mouse

Triggered is over used? And abuse maybe over used? I wonder what is going on for you to feel that way.

Denial? Now there's a word that gets overused! Oh well! And defensive. And fat.

Good thread. Thoughtful posts.

[feralkittymom]

I think the issue may be more one of identification. There's a stage of healing I think many of us go through when we deny belonging to "that" group, whatever it is. If I can believe that my parents were "strict" rather than "abusive," then I get some emotional/psychological distance from my experience.

The problem, however, is that like any form of denial, whatever's being denied manifests in other ways.

As far as "abuse" specifically, while there may be some norms, I'm not sure there can be a one-size-fits-all definition. I think people have to determine that for themselves, but with full awareness of themselves and their life functioning.

Originally Posted by hankster

Denial? Now there's a word that gets overused! Oh well! And defensive. And fat.

Good thread. Thoughtful posts.

And googling ones T isn't used enough! Nor c@@t :-0

Originally Posted by _Mouse

I think people are confusing an Internet forum with RL. Are we talking about people's private therapy sessions, or posts on a support forum? If someone thinks words are seeming over used, I'd suggest stepping away from your compute screens.
We can never know what goes on in private ind sessions in real life. We have no business either.
Step-away-from-your-screen-now!

I'm trying to figure out why your response irritates me so much, Mouse. Maybe it's because I have seen you be very supportive of behavior I believe to be unhealthy, and yet when Wikid wants to just define a term and explore its uses, and explore her feelings around the use of that word (and I participate in that), your response, "Step-away-from-your-screen-now!" I do not understand why WE should step away from our screen when we want to explore something. Why is our exploration of this topic more off limits than googling one's T for example? Why should WE step away from exploring our feelings and others' definitions on this point? What is it about our exploration of this topic that makes it bothersome to you that we discuss it?

[unaluna]

Sorry. .....

[Phreak]

I think if you get psycologically scarred by something then to you that was abusive because you've been damaged by it. There doesn't have to be intent to abuse and in reality normally isn't.

[EllieBear]

I don't know exactly how I would define it. I wouldn't say being in a car accident is abusive...I would use the word "traumatic" instead. But I'm also not sure there has to be intent to harm. My ex and my mom both have mental health issues that may keep them from understanding the impact of their behavior on others. Does that mean when my mom takes a baseball bat to a child that is not abuse? Or when my ex r***ed me to get what he wanted it was not abuse? I don't think so. I would definitely call that abuse whether or not someone could argue that they didn't fully comprehend the consequences of those choices. Lots of people with similar mental health issues choose to do something different. With my mom and my ex, there was "intent to control" even if they didn't think through the harm they were causing. They were clearly still making the choice to do something they knew was wrong. They both made sure to cover their tracks with lies and keep me isolated so no one would find out. So I think judging intent is tricky. I still believe they knew what they were doing and were choosing to act abusively. But in some of the other examples at the beginning of this thread, I think things can be "traumatic" without being abusive. Where that lines is for sure I have a hard time figuring out. I do tend to assign the term abusive to bigger things only. "Traumatic" though could be different for different people.

[granite1]

warning for mention of abuse

for me ..i have seen and survived some pretty horrific stuff that i might say is abuse. but at the same time i would say that it might be defined in what our experiences are. like a person who has never seen horrific things or survived them etc.. might think getting a spank on the butt and sent to bed without dinner as horribly abusive.but the child who was beaten bloody and bruised and locked in a room for days might say are you kidding.

[almostthere]

Thank u for the insight and thoughts about what the word "abuse" means.

I just had another try at therapy and just got home to read your post and I shared with my T the incist experience I had with a member of my family. I am a male and the family member was a female. No, it was not my mother, or aunt, if that's what you're thinking

Anyway, I tried very careful not to use the word "abuse" because it happened when I was just 11 years old and kids sometimes become courious about sex and in most cases there is no resposible adult to monitor their behavior, which is what happened in my case. The T nodded her head in agreement. I told my T that years ago no one talked about it.
But in todays well informed society one can clearly see why there are some many of us angry, ashamed, and guilt-ridden. It may also explain why people want to hurt themselves, (suicide), or why they may want to hurt someone else.

So I can relate to what ur saying and agree with u that the word "abuse" may not be a good word to use. The word implies a premeditated conscience thought with the intention of doing harm to another. It's does not take into account the complexities involved. Our society knows no other word to use.

Have a good day my friend....

Originally Posted by WikidPissah

I have had a t tell me "that was abuse" when relaying childhood events to them. My response was always a . To me, it's not, it was just life in the Pissah family. I often hear people term the word abuse for much lesser things...frequently I think it is another one of those over-used therapy words, like "triggered".

So...what exactly is ABUSE? Does the abuser have to deliberately intend harm to the abusee? Can accidental things be considered abuse? If an old woman rear ends me and causes extensive damage to my neck and shoulders, is that abusive? If my great uncle calls me that nickname that he's called me for as long as I can remember, and it really bugs me...is that abuse? Is it abuse when a T just doesn't get it? Where do we draw the line?

I am dead serious here, I am trying to form a circle around the word.

The definition is as follows, it seems to imply a deliberate action.

I think it doesn't necessarily have to be intentionally cruel to be harmful. Many of my family members would say, if confronted about something that happened in my childhood, "Well, it wasn't abuse because I wasn't trying to hurt you." Whether that's true or not, the action did hurt me. By analogy, if a parent were to feed a child some food that has been poisoned, but the parent doesn't know it, this isn't deliberate cruelty on the parent's part, but the child is still going to be very sick. There is no use denying that the food was poisoned, or pretending that the child didn't eat it and isn't sick. The harm is done, and it has to be dealt with if the child is going to get better.

Does simply the fact that it hurt me, or that another action would have been more appropriate instead, make what happened "abuse"? I suppose that's open to debate. I am inclined to vote yes, because I don't think anybody *plans* to abuse. Even when my father used very harsh discipline that didn't need to go that far (yell in the child's face like a drill sergeant at a new recruit, or the "just reach out from nowhere and whack" variety of corporal punishment) in his mind he thought he was doing the right thing, but that doesn't make it any less abuse. In turn I have done things to my daughters that were abusive or neglectful. I didn't know it at the time, but still, those things were abusive or neglectful, and my not intending to abuse them doesn't change that.

On the other hand, if a parent makes an honest mistake, and it's apologized for and steps are taken to correct it, then I don't think that's abuse. All parents make mistakes. I don't think it crosses into "abuse" territory unless the parent won't admit it was wrong, even when faced with the obvious evidence that the child has been harmed. If the parent accidentally feeds the child poison, the child gets sick, and the parent immediately rushes him/her to the doctor and then lovingly takes care of him/her for as long as it takes to recover, while admitting that an accidental poisoning has happened, then I would say it was only a mistake. If the parent accidentally feeds the child poison, the child gets sick, and the parent ignores the cries, won't provide medical care and/or threatens the child if he/she tells anyone what happened, then THAT is abuse.

TL;DR, I think I hit on it in the last paragraph, after some rambling. Maybe it crosses the line from "accidental" to "abusive" if there is denial and cover-up afterward. After all, if they know it has to be kept secret, then they know it was wrong, don't they? Otherwise, nothing to hide.

[nessaea]

Thanks for this thread! This is something I have always struggled with. I hate the a-word (abuse) because it's really hard for me to pinpoint what it is.

For myself, I always defined it as not only a deliberate action (or inaction, in cases of neglect) but also the person having a malicious intent and an awareness of the harm/consequences. I have found that most people I have talked to about this (mostly Ts or people in group therapy etc) disagree with this definition, which has made me have to re-think it. I haven't come up with an alternate one though.

[Miswimmy1]

I have had a similar situation, t telling me that i was emotionally abused as a child. But i didn't see it that way.

I think abuse is intent to harm, either through actions or words. if the person is not meaning to hurt you and does, i would just consider that bad thinking on their part or a mistake, not nessesarily abuse.

i also think that sometimes, one becomes so accustomed to it, that it becomes the norm and then they don't see it as abuse. sometimes it takes an outside eye.

[WikidPissah]

Originally Posted by Rect0pathic

Abuse, for me, means harmful intent and not respecting boundaries. Anything that hurts the soul, body, mind, environment and doesn't respect the person.

Thanks Rect, that makes sense.

Originally Posted by 2or3things

I don't know. I have a tendency to see things as "just the way it was" and not "abusive" per se. But I think that has as much to do with me and what I can take on as far as how I frame my past. Not sure if that applies for you or not.

Still, I do wonder about intent, and I'm not at all sure how much intent matters. At the risk of going all former English teacher on this, I wonder if it isn't a grammar issue. I think something someone does can be abusive without someone intending to abuse.

I mean, if a person does intend to cause harm, for sure that would seem like abuse/would be abusive. But say there's some issue that in some way prevents the abuser from knowing s/he's being abusive...maybe cultural differences or mental illness or coming from an abusive past her/himself. Whatever s/he is doing may be experienced as abuse/as being abusive by the victim, and the "abuser" could be clueless about it the entire time, thinking it's just "normal" or whatever.

see...I just don't know. How can someone abuse someone else if they aren't mistreating them? I think abusers know when they hurt someone, if not then it's hurtful, but not abusive.

Originally Posted by My kids are cool

I also feel the word 'abuse' gets overused, but maybe that's just me as well. When people talk about a boss or a co-worker or whatever being abusive, I know that the picture it creates in my mind is pretty extreme in terms of what it would take for ME to call people in those positions 'abusive.' When the person then talks about the boss' behavior (or co-worker's or whoever), it sometimes seems to me that what the original person is saying is that they do not like the boss or the boss is being discourteous. I think there is a difference between being discourteous, obtuse, or just not nice, and being abusive.

Because of the nature of this forum, I think the way we each use language and define it is going to bump up against other people's sensitivities sometimes. It will be nice to just discuss it and figure out where people stand.

For me, as I said, I dislike the word abusive being used unless there is a true, relatively large, problem. Not nice or not getting it does not count as abuse. For me, there must be some intent to harm, and actual harm involved.

And for me, I resent it when people will (on rare occasions) say they wish they were abused, or one person mentioned wishing he or she were dissociative. If a person had any real understanding of what it is to be abused, or the level of abuse that is involved in triggering a dissociative issue, there is no way the person would ever say that. Many of us who have been abused, particularly to the point of triggering a dissociative issue, will get cranky sometimes about this issue. Or maybe it's just me. Dunno.

I agree with Chris...good post.

Originally Posted by hankster

Denial? Now there's a word that gets overused! Oh well! And defensive. And fat.

Good thread. Thoughtful posts.

Thanks Hankstah

Originally Posted by Phreak

I think if you get psycologically scarred by something then to you that was abusive because you've been damaged by it. There doesn't have to be intent to abuse and in reality normally isn't.

Thanks. Yes, I get that. But how would you psychologically scar someone without meaning to? If you beat them, you mean to hurt them.

Originally Posted by EllieBear

I don't know exactly how I would define it. I wouldn't say being in a car accident is abusive...I would use the word "traumatic" instead. But I'm also not sure there has to be intent to harm. My ex and my mom both have mental health issues that may keep them from understanding the impact of their behavior on others. Does that mean when my mom takes a baseball bat to a child that is not abuse? Or when my ex r***ed me to get what he wanted it was not abuse? I don't think so. I would definitely call that abuse whether or not someone could argue that they didn't fully comprehend the consequences of those choices. Lots of people with similar mental health issues choose to do something different. With my mom and my ex, there was "intent to control" even if they didn't think through the harm they were causing. They were clearly still making the choice to do something they knew was wrong. They both made sure to cover their tracks with lies and keep me isolated so no one would find out. So I think judging intent is tricky. I still believe they knew what they were doing and were choosing to act abusively. But in some of the other examples at the beginning of this thread, I think things can be "traumatic" without being abusive. Where that lines is for sure I have a hard time figuring out. I do tend to assign the term abusive to bigger things only. "Traumatic" though could be different for different people.

When your mom took a baseball bat to you, I can guarantee there was intent to hurt. Same with your ex. Whether or not they admit that is besides the point. They meant to hurt you...it was deliberate, therefore abusive.

Originally Posted by granite1

warning for mention of abuse

for me ..i have seen and survived some pretty horrific stuff that i might say is abuse. but at the same time i would say that it might be defined in what our experiences are. like a person who has never seen horrific things or survived them etc.. might think getting a spank on the butt and sent to bed without dinner as horribly abusive.but the child who was beaten bloody and bruised and locked in a room for days might say are you kidding.

yea...and I don't want to be like that. I guess if it involves a child being bruised, berated, neglected or molested I consider it deliberate. There is no way a molester doesn't know that they are hurting the child. They may not admit they knew...but they know.

Originally Posted by almostthere

Thank u for the insight and thoughts about what the word "abuse" means.

I just had another try at therapy and just got home to read your post and I shared with my T the incist experience I had with a member of my family. I am a male and the family member was a female. No, it was not my mother, or aunt, if that's what you're thinking

Anyway, I tried very careful not to use the word "abuse" because it happened when I was just 11 years old and kids sometimes become courious about sex and in most cases there is no resposible adult to monitor their behavior, which is what happened in my case. The T nodded her head in agreement. I told my T that years ago no one talked about it.
But in todays well informed society one can clearly see why there are some many of us angry, ashamed, and guilt-ridden. It may also explain why people want to hurt themselves, (suicide), or why they may want to hurt someone else.

So I can relate to what ur saying and agree with u that the word "abuse" may not be a good word to use. The word implies a premeditated conscience thought with the intention of doing harm to another. It's does not take into account the complexities involved. Our society knows no other word to use.

Have a good day my friend....

see...I would call that abuse. (((hug))) In any event, it was NOT your fault. 11 yr. olds are still pretty naive.

Originally Posted by Lovebird

I think it doesn't necessarily have to be intentionally cruel to be harmful. Many of my family members would say, if confronted about something that happened in my childhood, "Well, it wasn't abuse because I wasn't trying to hurt you." Whether that's true or not, the action did hurt me. By analogy, if a parent were to feed a child some food that has been poisoned, but the parent doesn't know it, this isn't deliberate cruelty on the parent's part, but the child is still going to be very sick. There is no use denying that the food was poisoned, or pretending that the child didn't eat it and isn't sick. The harm is done, and it has to be dealt with if the child is going to get better.

Maybe it crosses the line from "accidental" to "abusive" if there is denial and cover-up afterward. After all, if they know it has to be kept secret, then they know it was wrong, don't they? Otherwise, nothing to hide.

hmmmm. I think it depends on the hurt. If a parent forgets to pick their kid up, that's hurtful to a child. Maybe even traumatic. But abuse? i don't think so. And if the poison was an accident the poisoning isn't abusive...but the neglect after would be.

Originally Posted by nessaea

Thanks for this thread! This is something I have always struggled with. I hate the a-word (abuse) because it's really hard for me to pinpoint what it is.

For myself, I always defined it as not only a deliberate action (or inaction, in cases of neglect) but also the person having a malicious intent and an awareness of the harm/consequences. I have found that most people I have talked to about this (mostly Ts or people in group therapy etc) disagree with this definition, which has made me have to re-think it. I haven't come up with an alternate one though.

yea. Me either

Mouse...I am not playing with you today.

[trdleblue]

Wiki - I have the same thoughts when my t says that I have been through a lot of trauma or a lot of abuse. I have always viewed it as simply my life. I do realize that I am a hypocrite though, and if someone else were to say they went through similar experiences, I would consider it abuse. For some reason it is difficult for me to consider my childhood as abusive.

I don't think that intent matters as to whether or not something is abusive. There are a lot of people who do great harm to children thinking that they are acting in the child's best interest. I will even go as far as to say that there are probably many who sexually abuse children that do not intend to damage them. They of course are disgusting people and horribly wrong, but my guess is in their heads they probably view it differently.

[ultramar]

Wikidpissah, I think it was brave of you to post this, thank you.

And for me, I resent it when people will (on rare occasions) say they wish they were abused, or one person mentioned wishing he or she were dissociative. If a person had any real understanding of what it is to be abused, or the level of abuse that is involved in triggering a dissociative issue, there is no way the person would ever say that. Many of us who have been abused, particularly to the point of triggering a dissociative issue, will get cranky sometimes about this issue. Or maybe it's just me. Dunno.

MKC, the above I also find very upsetting. From reading these instances, I find, though, that it seems to come from a place where the person is and has been for some time in an enormous amount of pain, and feels the need to find an origin to so much pain to explain it -if the current distress is so catastrophic, then its origins must be the worst thing(s) imaginable as well. I don't think anyone 'wants' to have been abused, I think some people do want an explanation for their pain and behavior. I think today, and culturally, trauma has been and is being studied a great deal, so many books on the subject, quoted by even more books, and many studies that find it as a cause for a great deal if ills. So, in a way, it is natural to consider this a possibility, even in the absence of clear memory. What tends to upset me most, though, is the sometimes encouragement of this (tacit or otherwise). I think that what makes us what we are today is a combination of many many things and experiences, of which traumas can be one. We're so very complicated.

I think trauma/abuse means very different things to different people, and its meaning can depend on the context of our lives as a whole, and a lot of other things.

I think using the word 'overused' can be very upsetting, because it sounds invalidating. For others, *feeling* it's overused can also feel invalidating because it feels that the concepts (their experiences?) are being watered down somehow. It's a very difficult topic and hard to talk about out in the open.

I understand the comparison with the use of 'trigger' because this can mean so many things (upset, anger, frustration, embarrassment, anxiety, panic, etc.) -trauma is also pretty general, so when someone uses it, there's no way to tell exactly what they mean by that. But that's okay. No one can know the hearts and minds of another and maybe the best we can do is to figure out what it means to us, in the context of our own lives, which can be quite a struggle. But it's a very personal struggle.

[tinyrabbit]

I think this is a really difficult question because it depends so much on the general environment, the individual relationships within it, the intentions and so on. For example I have friends who were spanked quite a lot, some with objects, but who I think were not abused because their families were ultimately loving and supportive.

Personally, I think the following factors can help distinguish abuse. Is the parent acting in the child's best interest or to alleviate their own anger or frustration? If it's a punishment, is it proportionate or excessive? Is the child afraid of the parents? Are the parents concerned about how the child feels? Is the child afraid to express feelings? Is the child afraid of the parents all the time and not just afraid of proportionate consequences when they misbehave?

Also, how does the child feel about themselves? Do they have low self-esteem, feelings of badness or worthlessness? This is key. Some people may disagree but I think there are some abusive parents who don't hit and some good-enough parents who do. I don't think I would personally use corporal punishment but I don't think a smack on the backside is abuse.

I am in the opposite situation to some of you (those who don't like Ts calling it abuse) as I need my T to help validate my view that it was abuse, as I have always felt that way but felt I was somehow exaggerating or making a fuss about nothing.

I think I was abused because my feelings did not matter and I was not treated like a person with rights, needs and feelings. Any discipline in my house was really about whether I was annoying my dad, not about teaching me how to exist in the world, and I was frightened of him all the time. I was ignored and had obvious needs neglected.

Abuse is not necessarily an intent to harm. It can be an act of omission, not commission. I had headlice repeatedly left untreated, got badly sunburnt due to a lack of protection and peeled badly due to lack of after sun, wasn't taken to a doctor after I almost drowned, sometimes wasn't given proper meals (and would not have dared complain), my teeth weren't looked after properly, I could go on.

I'm starting to see that I was neglected, that I lived in fear, that there was DV in my house, that I was emotionally neglected/abused (told not to have feelings, told how ungrateful I was while not being properly cared for, screamed at over the tiniest things). My brother told me he remembers being on a beach and a man intervened and told my dad off for how he was treating his son - not because of any physical violence but the way in which he was shouting at him. Recently a friend talked about teasing her dad as he cried at a movie and I was like, huh? You make fun of your dad? You're not afraid to do that?

There's other stuff I don't want to get into right now.

I dissociate physically (I either just stop feeling things, eg I can be shaking and not feel it, or kind of disappear into my head) and emotionally, and I have dissociative amnesia. I've blocked out a lot of memories. In some cases I have the memory but the feelings are just missing. I told my T I felt nothing when my dad was raging and breaking stuff. Eventually I asked if he thought I was afraid and dissociated from my fear and he said it's highly likely.

I think you can emotionally scar someone without meaning to. My mum doesn't realise the harm she causes. When I tried to SU age 15, she just went home and left me alone in the hospital and then I heard her on the phone saying she had no idea I was unhappy even though I had been SI-ing and she knew and ignored it, and she was trying to get my dad to see a doctor about his anger issues, how could she not know?

But she believes her own BS and doesn't realise the hurt she causes eg recently I tried to talk to her about my childhood and she said "Well at least you spent a lot of time out of the house." That's how much I mattered. And I think it's the sense of not mattering, of being afraid, of having to be on guard, of not being valued or safe - these are the things that constitute abuse.

As to CSA, the thing that defines abuse vs. experimentation is POWER. If the two parties do not have equal power, it is abuse.

Lastly, I am in the UK and sometimes you hear stories of kids from loving families saying: "I'm calling Childline!" when they don't get their way. It strikes me that children who are actually being abused do not dare say things like that to their parents.

Sorry this is so long.

[Anne2.0]

In law there is a distinction between specific intent and general intent. General intent means the intent to engage in the behavior, and specific intent means the intent to cause the harm. Something would be non-intentional in general intent if someone accidentally knocked you down or if they had a seizure and punched you in the nose. Something would be non-intentional in specific intent if the person intended to commit the action (e.g. hit a child) but didn't intend to cause the harm (such as a broken nose, or the fear that typically results from being hit). Some people actually believe things like hitting doesn't cause harm to children, because they were hit. Or that sexual touching doesn't hurt kids as long as they are not "forced" to do it. Those people are still abusers; it doesn't matter whether they think that what they did wasn't harmful when it was.

So to me abuse is about what the perpetrator did and not whether his or her intentions were to produce harm or not. I think that probably a lot of abuse is perpetrated without an intention to harm and some of that with probably the belief that it's not harmful. "Oh, he didn't mean anything by that." "I would never do anything to hurt my child." "She was just trying to be affectionate." Etc Etc Etc. Sometimes these are just excuses or ruses that perpetrators use, sometimes people really believe them. I don't think it matters whether perpetrators believe these things or not in terms of when something is abuse. I have found that what I believe about my perpetrator's intentions makes a difference in the story I tell myself, that believing that intentions were to commit the actions but probably not the intent feels more true to the things that happened than otherwise.

[critterlady]

I think those of us who have been abused tend to minimize our experience by telling ourselves that it was just life in our families. Part of that minimization is to use gentler words for it. Of course there are degrees of abuse, but it doesn't require lasting physical effects to have lasting emotional effects.

For me, I hate it when my T calls my CSA r***. But I'm coming around to acknowledging that that is what it was. That helps me to understand why it had such a lasting impact on me.