BusynMember
Well-Known Member
Good article.
"I have been very sick for three weeks and it has given me a lot of time to think about things, and inevitably the elephant in the room raises its trunk and starts bellowing for attention.
I have been thinking about the effects that being shunned by family and community have had on my life and recently had to answer a question on a form about suffering the effects of long term abuse.
This led me to the statement in my title.
I have come to believe that shunning is not a one-time thing that happens once and you just move on. I did at one time think that this is what it was, and expected to be able to move on with my life.
However, after 15 years of disconnection and missing out on every conceivable form of familial association, love, support, good times and bad times and all that those teach us about how to grow as a human being, I now feel differently.
Shunning is a silent and insidious form of psychological torture. It is nearly impossible to describe its effects unless you have felt it yourself. It eats away at your insides in a way that can be invisible even to oneself.(This is what to me vindictive "no contact" is...no contact done to punish. I am well aware of this. If it were truly no contact, the person doing it would move on with his/her life and not think about us. In my case, it has been ANYTHING but that. My FOO stalker is MORE than just in my face...needs to know what I do at all times, it seems. My own private thoughts here have been obsessively read). Anyhow, digressing back to the article....
Every day I get up and I don't have my family is a day I am being subjected to abuse. Even if my day rolls on the same as yesterday, even if nobody is yelling at me or breaking my bones, or whatever. Every day my family chooses to maintain their silence and their distance and that means every day they choose to hurt me.
I think it is supremely important to acknowledge that the suffering each day is real. It has a source, it is not some internal personality flaw one has. It is a very deliberate strategy with aims and rules.
It is a strategy designed specifically to hurt you in the most deep and abiding way. It is a strategy to make you believe that you are completely unloveable, and always will be.
It strangles you from within your own mind. If you don't stop to acknowledge that you are an ongoing victim of a campaign of psychological torture you end up believing that you are the broken one, the unloveable one, instead of an innocent victim of a vicious group bent on controlling its members through fear of experiencing what we are going through, on coercing through pain those who have 'strayed' and on punishing those who stay away.
Please, all of us, try to remember this every day. You are NOT crazy. You are not unloveable. You are not broken. You are being deliberately tortured."
This author I feel is right on the money. People use "no contact for my own sake" to wound the other person. I am glad to be past the hurting part, but will not forget it and will never again allow people who do this (and some have a history of shunning on and off) back into my life. This article is a lesson to all of us. It's not us. We are not doing the abuse. They are. We can have peace knowing WE are not the bad guy. Articles like this AND my therapy has really eased my now contented mind. If I were so bad, EVERYONE would hate me and I have more love than hate. So it has to be them. Not that I'm perfect, but never used shunning as a way to hurt anyone.)
"I have been very sick for three weeks and it has given me a lot of time to think about things, and inevitably the elephant in the room raises its trunk and starts bellowing for attention.
I have been thinking about the effects that being shunned by family and community have had on my life and recently had to answer a question on a form about suffering the effects of long term abuse.
This led me to the statement in my title.
I have come to believe that shunning is not a one-time thing that happens once and you just move on. I did at one time think that this is what it was, and expected to be able to move on with my life.
However, after 15 years of disconnection and missing out on every conceivable form of familial association, love, support, good times and bad times and all that those teach us about how to grow as a human being, I now feel differently.
Shunning is a silent and insidious form of psychological torture. It is nearly impossible to describe its effects unless you have felt it yourself. It eats away at your insides in a way that can be invisible even to oneself.(This is what to me vindictive "no contact" is...no contact done to punish. I am well aware of this. If it were truly no contact, the person doing it would move on with his/her life and not think about us. In my case, it has been ANYTHING but that. My FOO stalker is MORE than just in my face...needs to know what I do at all times, it seems. My own private thoughts here have been obsessively read). Anyhow, digressing back to the article....
Every day I get up and I don't have my family is a day I am being subjected to abuse. Even if my day rolls on the same as yesterday, even if nobody is yelling at me or breaking my bones, or whatever. Every day my family chooses to maintain their silence and their distance and that means every day they choose to hurt me.
I think it is supremely important to acknowledge that the suffering each day is real. It has a source, it is not some internal personality flaw one has. It is a very deliberate strategy with aims and rules.
It is a strategy designed specifically to hurt you in the most deep and abiding way. It is a strategy to make you believe that you are completely unloveable, and always will be.
It strangles you from within your own mind. If you don't stop to acknowledge that you are an ongoing victim of a campaign of psychological torture you end up believing that you are the broken one, the unloveable one, instead of an innocent victim of a vicious group bent on controlling its members through fear of experiencing what we are going through, on coercing through pain those who have 'strayed' and on punishing those who stay away.
Please, all of us, try to remember this every day. You are NOT crazy. You are not unloveable. You are not broken. You are being deliberately tortured."
This author I feel is right on the money. People use "no contact for my own sake" to wound the other person. I am glad to be past the hurting part, but will not forget it and will never again allow people who do this (and some have a history of shunning on and off) back into my life. This article is a lesson to all of us. It's not us. We are not doing the abuse. They are. We can have peace knowing WE are not the bad guy. Articles like this AND my therapy has really eased my now contented mind. If I were so bad, EVERYONE would hate me and I have more love than hate. So it has to be them. Not that I'm perfect, but never used shunning as a way to hurt anyone.)
- 14 comments
- share
Last edited: