Enduring Repeated Emotional Abuse

One of the hardest challenges of enduring repeated emotional or physical abuse within an ongoing relationships is not being able to easily get away from it. As well as enduring the isolation that comes from not knowing where to get help. Or running out of sufficient help, because it is hard to get frequent enough counseling from professionals.  And friends and family do not like to hear about it; it is too personal and it makes people uncomfortable.  They don't want me to suffer and they can't understand why I do not take better care of myself and prevent the abuse.  As if it is easy to start or stop the behavior of another.  Besides if I talk about what really goes on, they will start to hate the perpetrator.  I don't blame them.  It is easy to do, not helpful, and dangerous.  Harmful actions that arise from hate are no better than abuse.  It's better to break the cycle of violence from the inside.  To heal within versus lash out and harm others.

I stop talking to many friends, about the ongoing abuse I endured, because I dreaded seeing that look on their face as if their minds were assuming I did something despicable to deserve it.  And if they do listen because they care, they will not be open to hearing about it much more than once.  They want it instantly handled by disposing of the connection that leads to it.  No matter what the extenuating circumstances. And if I don't act as they would to end it, they will treat me like I brought it all onto myself and I should know better.

When young kids are abused reporting it can lead to separated families with kids removed and put into foster care.  That threat alone can lead to children enduring damaging situations in order to not be away from their families or for the fear of being placed in a potentially worse environment, in foster care with strangers with whom there is no bond.

As an adult, people just expect me to know better and deal with it so it does not go on.

Some how abuse, once known is a deal breaker – at least for those not used to enduring it.  For those used to it, we can figure abuse will simply come regardless of who is with us – as if the whole world is only full of hurtful unconscious people.  It can seem to those abused that our skin is too thin and we are much to sensitive to how people make remarks and insults, that might be too subtle for most people to notice. Yet maybe we also witnessed our own parents power struggles and spousal abuse so we have years of fine tuning our radar for the next emotional blow out.

As a recipient of abuse, it is easy to run out of places to turn to process the painful upsets which can lead to a degraded sense of self for holding so much of it inside, for too many years.  Out in the world it can seem like few people know what it feels like to receive abuse, to try hard to not take any of it personally and also not put up with it, when all resistance to it only escalates into fights, violent exhausting struggles for better balances of power. Respect no one should have to fight to have.