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Total and Utter Disrespect. Ideas, Insight, Reaction,Opinion?
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<blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 616162" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>Susie, we are doing a thread in P.E. about the process of recovering from an abuser's decision to label us abusable, about what we learn and accept about ourselves from having been targeted and victimized. There is something there too about everything having been sealed in such contempt that we cannot touch or take strength from our cores without reinterpreting our core identities through confronting what they taught us about ourselves, about who we were and what we deserved.</p><p></p><p>I thought about that when you posted that you were used to disrespect from your family.</p><p></p><p>I am not familiar with the backstory for your family, Susiestar. I hear surprise and outrage in your post. Is it that the grandmother cancelled the Christmas celebration, which is one of the few times you gather as a whole family? And that the only other person who would be there would be the abuser? So, you are supposed to accept the abuser, pretend, along with him or her, that nothing bad happened?</p><p></p><p>I would be angry, too.</p><p></p><p>I am angry, for you.</p><p></p><p>How dare they discount you! </p><p></p><p>Rejection is a big thing in my family of origin, too. I concluded that, now that the power to physically hurt us is no longer an option, the abusers use whatever power they do have to hurt us. The thing I take away from this is that, like every abused child, I wish for what I never had with a fierceness that is heartbreaking. I wanted the holidays, I wanted someone to care about my pregnancies, about my children, about my cooking and my home and my feelings.</p><p></p><p>I want to be celebrated, I want to be cherished. If I could not have those things, I at least wanted and expected my children to be cherished. It hardly occurred to me that they would be victimized, that they would be toyed with and teased and rejected, as I had been. Had my abuser cherished my children, I would have seen it as a form of validation for myself. It was like admitting there had been something so wrong with me that their abuse or neglect was justified somehow, but that this badness, this thing that made me abusable, was not in my children. When I would see instead that same kind of game playing, that same rejection, happening to my children, I would be so furious...and yet, because I had not resolved my own issues, I was powerless to not want what I wanted from my family of origin. The only freedom from those feelings comes from stepping out of the circle entirely. We have to heal to the point that we truly do see the rot at the core of what happened to us and reject it <u>for ourselves.</u></p><p></p><p><u>It is not okay that you were rejected by your parents. Not now, and not ever. That you are used to it is their pathology. It has nothing to do with you.</u></p><p></p><p>To me, it looks like your family of origin is playing the same hurtful game they played with you. They are hurting you again, and hurting you double, through your children.</p><p></p><p>The dirty buggers.</p><p></p><p>It isn't even a matter of "Oh, to heck with them." It truly is a matter of seeing their pathologies so clearly that we no longer believe anything they taught us about who we are, about who we have the right to be.</p><p></p><p>Until we do that, until we know in our deepest hearts that our families of origin have chosen, and are choosing, again and again, to indulge their sicknesses instead of doing the hard work of healing, we are vulnerable to them because we think they want the same things we do.</p><p></p><p>They don't, susiestar.</p><p></p><p>They are dangerous to you, because you love and are vulnerable to them.</p><p></p><p>Cedar</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 616162, member: 17461"] Susie, we are doing a thread in P.E. about the process of recovering from an abuser's decision to label us abusable, about what we learn and accept about ourselves from having been targeted and victimized. There is something there too about everything having been sealed in such contempt that we cannot touch or take strength from our cores without reinterpreting our core identities through confronting what they taught us about ourselves, about who we were and what we deserved. I thought about that when you posted that you were used to disrespect from your family. I am not familiar with the backstory for your family, Susiestar. I hear surprise and outrage in your post. Is it that the grandmother cancelled the Christmas celebration, which is one of the few times you gather as a whole family? And that the only other person who would be there would be the abuser? So, you are supposed to accept the abuser, pretend, along with him or her, that nothing bad happened? I would be angry, too. I am angry, for you. How dare they discount you! Rejection is a big thing in my family of origin, too. I concluded that, now that the power to physically hurt us is no longer an option, the abusers use whatever power they do have to hurt us. The thing I take away from this is that, like every abused child, I wish for what I never had with a fierceness that is heartbreaking. I wanted the holidays, I wanted someone to care about my pregnancies, about my children, about my cooking and my home and my feelings. I want to be celebrated, I want to be cherished. If I could not have those things, I at least wanted and expected my children to be cherished. It hardly occurred to me that they would be victimized, that they would be toyed with and teased and rejected, as I had been. Had my abuser cherished my children, I would have seen it as a form of validation for myself. It was like admitting there had been something so wrong with me that their abuse or neglect was justified somehow, but that this badness, this thing that made me abusable, was not in my children. When I would see instead that same kind of game playing, that same rejection, happening to my children, I would be so furious...and yet, because I had not resolved my own issues, I was powerless to not want what I wanted from my family of origin. The only freedom from those feelings comes from stepping out of the circle entirely. We have to heal to the point that we truly do see the rot at the core of what happened to us and reject it [U]for ourselves.[/U] [U]It is not okay that you were rejected by your parents. Not now, and not ever. That you are used to it is their pathology. It has nothing to do with you.[/U] To me, it looks like your family of origin is playing the same hurtful game they played with you. They are hurting you again, and hurting you double, through your children. The dirty buggers. It isn't even a matter of "Oh, to heck with them." It truly is a matter of seeing their pathologies so clearly that we no longer believe anything they taught us about who we are, about who we have the right to be. Until we do that, until we know in our deepest hearts that our families of origin have chosen, and are choosing, again and again, to indulge their sicknesses instead of doing the hard work of healing, we are vulnerable to them because we think they want the same things we do. They don't, susiestar. They are dangerous to you, because you love and are vulnerable to them. Cedar [/QUOTE]
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