Victim Blaming is Never OK!

What is important to pay attention to is how much emotional baggage another person tries to dump on you. Often a person who wants to be good is helpful and caring and often it's this kind of person that others take advantage of where they begin to slowly dump their emotional baggage on the nice person. Life lessons tend to teach a person that carrying someone elses emotional baggage doesn't help to empower you or even gain you respect. Often someone is expected from an early age to carry a parent's emotional baggage and always please the parent or is expected to see dysfuntional interactions between their parents and stay quiet. So, not realizing it a child can develop the mindset that they have to carry the emotional baggage of others. A child can actually become very confused about what "respect" really means. This can make it harder on a person who struggles when they are disrespected into thinking they are the one at fault when someone else comes along and disrespects them. The truth is that there are lots of people out there that really do NOT know how to respect, they genuinely never learned what it means to respect others. It's always important to remember that just because another person doesn't show you respect it never means you don't deserve it.

Good post (((((((( OE )))))))))

Good post golden eve Thanks for this thread

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Originally Posted by golden_eve About blaming the abuse victim, blaming them for staying or for even getting involved: There is usually some rationalization for blaming the victim, most commonly, that the victim could have escaped the situation or avoided it in the first place. Victims may or may not be benefited by concrete assistance, but validation of their experiences are essential for sanity and growth. The tendency to blame survivors has some additional elements:

I find it ironic that people think a “tough love” approach is an acceptable way of “helping “ a victim or survivor. The “I told you so’s” seem endless both said and unsaid. Since when did shaming , scolding, blaming ever help anyone ever ? A victim doesn’t choose to be one. It’s not like they wake up one day and say “ today I think I will get in a relationship with an abuser”. Abuse is pervasive and sneaky. Abusers either trick you into believing them and their lies or they outright attack you.

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Failure to recognize the simple fact that attempting to leave a relationship is blocked or punished by the primary aggressor most of the time. Someone who has not experienced this may have trouble imagining this. Confusion with the "duty to mitigate damages" from contract law. Abuse is not just a breach of contract, and human relationships are not subject to contract law! Confusion of submission with consent. Confusion of tolerance with consent. Most people endure some meanness from their partners because they consider it an aberration that won't be repeated. The systematic nature of domestic violence only becomes clear over time. Survivors blame themselves for the abuse (this is victim self-blaming). They of course are aided in this by the primary aggressor who is constantly blaming them. Therefore, they for a long time stay in the relationship and try to change their own behavior to end the abuse. When and if they retroactively reframe the experience as abusive, they deserve validation, even if they stayed "when something was wrong." Final clarity by a survivor that the relationship is abusive and unworkable can not be retro-actively applied to earlier in the relationship when the survivor was bewildered about what was happening. Even where the survivor recognizes the abuse and its inevitability, she may stay in a relationship because it appears to be (and may in fact be) her best option in life considering the difficulties and lack of support she faces alone. Where all options are bad, a choice does not constitute consent to the the downsides of any option chosen, rather just acquiescence. If later, better options arise, validation is warranted about abuse when options were all poor. The effects of abuse (confusion, low self-esteem, bitterness, lessened sensitivity to danger, etc..(many more)) are erroneously attributed to the survivor as personal characteristics that lead her to "choose" the abusive situation. Staying where there has been abuse does not constitute consent or permission for the abuse!

Especially as it pertains to physical abuse, when you live in fear and are threatened daily and harmed you are afraid for your life ! Of course it’s not easy to leave. And leave where ? People always say go to a shelter- assuming one is nearby and has room and allows your pets or children. Leave all your possessions to be destroyed by the abuser. You don’t want to go to family because the abuser know where your family lives. If you share finances the abuser may have all the money. There is no tough love with victims. They have it tough enough.

5 Victim-Shaming Myths That Harm Abuse and Trauma Survivors and Encourage Spiritual Bypassing

I remember when I was about 10 and was crying because my father had beaten me. Both of my parents laughed at me and made fun and said that "You want to be a victim".

That was my mother and my father, together.

Thank you for sharing ennie. I was shamed again only recently by one of those “all knowing people” I think you probably know the sort of person I mean

I'm going to hazard to put forward MY situation, which has its own dynamics and issues involved. I suffer from what I think are Borderline Rage episodes, they involve my wife and relate to my hypersexuality. I posted a new thread in this subforum on my story, but I suffered extremely acute childhood sexual abuse from my brother as a child and it has made me hypersexual ever since in addition to other serious mental health disorders. But I would characterize some of my behavior as victim blaming, in much of the same state that you mentioned where you depart completely from the world of logic and are completely operating out of the limbic system. That's the way it feels like for me, once I get to that mode I am explosive and don't have control over what I say, which is almost all of it harmful.

This then feeds into the cycle of my own self-destruction, in that I feel such horrible shame about what I did, that I am my brother, or I am my father, or then have extreme paranoia that she will leave me which then causes me to act in ways which make her leaving me only more likely. I'm literally trying everything I can to get treatment in the process, I'm fighting for my wife who I desperately love and for our two small beautiful children. I am seeing counselors regularly, am seeing a psychiatrist, going to group therapy, exercising, meditating, but it seems like life keeps throwing in devastating blows one after the other and won't let me recover, and she has borne the brunt of that.

I don't know what I should do besides just trying to get better, but I fear she might be losing patience with the process.

I’m hurt by the way that I was abused by my husband. He denies everything and instead says that I abused him. I never even abused him. I always loved him and respected him. I always treated him right. I always respected his family and parents. He is the one that treated my parents who are senior citizens like s***. He would call them on the phone and yell at them. He would send them rude text messages. The abuse that I suffered was on our wedding night he asked me if I was a virgin and when I told him that I was a virgin he didn’t believe me. He threatened me that maybe he would find a girlfriend. Some of the times that we would make out or have sex I would find noticeable bites/ bruises on my breasts because he liked to bite me. Sometimes he would put his hand around my throat when we were having sex other times he would pull my hair. He would deny both whenever I brought it up with him. He never tried to work out our marriage. He listened to and was influenced by his friends. He only lived with me from Feb 2018 to June 2018 then he moved to Maryland and stayed there until we went to India in November. He only visited me once in August. He claimed that he only visited me for the my best friend’s daughter’s first birthday party. We went to India on November 27. As soon as we arrived at the airport, He realized that he forgot his passport and itinerary at the house so my dad and him went back to get the backpack that he left. He comes back within two minutes of the cut off time that the British Airlines people told us that if they made it back by 7:30 we were allowed to go on the trip. He apologized to my parents for the stress but never apologized to me. When he went back to the house with my dad he tells my dad that he is not a very lovable husband to me. In India we had many issues some of were the fact that I crossed my legs when I sat in front of his parents. The second day that I was in India he kicked my legs and uncrossed my legs. A couple days later when I asked him why he kicked me he automatically took me to my cousin’s house and showed my cousin, cousin-in-law, and aunt how he kicked me. While we were there he started complaining that my parents didn’t buy him a car, give him a credit card or offer him and his family the rights to the property that my parents have in India. About two weeks later, one of my cousins invited us for dinner and my husband calls me to tell me that we are going to go for the dinner the next night. The next morning he calls me back and says that he can’t make it for dinner. I called him a liar because I was raised to keep my commitments and if someone invites you and you tell them that you are coming you don’t change your mind last minute and don’t give a reason. That night when we’re in the car going home he starts an argument with me and starts yelling at me. He’s yelling very loudly and I’m scared that we’re going to get in a car accident so I raised my hand to protect myself but he thinks I raised my hand to hit him. I came back December 27 and he came back January 28. On January 30, I woke up and came downstairs. That was when he told me that he was moving back to Maryland to live with his bachelor friends and find a job. I called him mental because who comes back from India and not even two days later drives from Georgia to Maryland. He finally got a job on April 8. He promised to visit and if he couldn’t find a job he said that he would move back to Georgia. He lied. On Father’s Day he emailed me and told me that he wanted a divorce and that either him or his lawyer would contact me with separation papers and divorce papers so I could sign them and send them back so we could happily go our separate ways. The worst part of this is we actually got married on my 29th birthday and now I don’t know how I’m going to survive my birthday this year. I know that I have five months left until my birthday but I’m just so heartbroken. Why did I waste two years of my life on this guy? He claimed in the emails that he loves me but he’s tired of all the arguments. I never started any arguments. I was raised to respect elders and always have respected elders so it was a shock for me to see him being rude to my parents, yelling at them on the phone and sending very rude messages to them. He once messaged my dad that he would take care of me and told my dad to take care of his wife meaning my mom.

This is a great post! I will keep this in mind!

I am sorry that you had to go through this! You didn't deserve to be treated this way! We are here for you!

I hear you! I heard that phrase stop being a victim!