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I'm so sorry, mourning me. Gentle  if it helps. If that feels unsafe, then I take them back.

When we're abused it's not because we did something wrong or dressed wrong or something. It's all on the abuser. There are often more victims too.

I was in regular contact with FOO as well and would put my injured inner children into their inner safe places (imagination work) so that I could be in the same building as my sexual abuser (my M). I also found it really difficult trying to have 'normal contact'

Hi Blueberry, thank you for your message. I really resonate with all of your post not just quoted bits. I really appreciate your understanding.
I cant believe how IDENTICALLY I have coped with being around my abuser (older brother) with exactly what you said. I have just reached the point now that I realize I am cutting contact with FOO. I didnt consciously do it, but just a few weeks ago I did not attend my nieces 4th bday party (at brothers house) because I just CANNOT do it anymore. It is too hard on me to be around him and I chose myself this time instead of holding up the image for everyone else- what I have ALWAYS done. Sacraficed my true inner feelings and pain to make everyone around me content.  I just cant anymore....just wont. I dont know what the future holds and my biggest worry is how to maintain  a relationship with his 4 children without having one with him.  That really keeps me awake at night bc I just want them to know how.much I love them...and obviously cant reveal to them the reason I HATE their father....its all too much.
Thank you for saying the part about what I was wearing.  For some reason I really really believed that my outfit was part of the reason that he all the sudden turned abusive to me when he didnt cross that line before. It really shook me up. And of course the instant protection of him...and I mean instantly within minutes back outside with the rest of the group as though he didnt just rip away my entire idea of him as a proper uncle.   Just so damaging to me. So so damaging.

I was talking with my psychologist last week about forgiveness. And I told here there are things in my past that I might be able to work towards forgiving, but there are certain things and certain people I will never want to forgive - because I feel they do not deserve it. And she agreed, she agreed that there are things that are unforgiveable.

Thank you for sharing this with me. Thank you for helping validate my feelings on forgiveness and sharing that your psychologist didn't push you into it but agreed that there are things that are unforgivable. 

I am grateful to every person here who has responded. I feel like I am getting heard for the first time in my entire life. ❤

Hi mgrizz, thank you for replying again. I completely agree with you, finding some comfort in the thought that my abusers will be judged and made to answer for their evil actions against other humans. I imagine my one perp who is already dead burning in an eternity of * for the hurt he caused to me and many others who werent protected from him. He was offered up a buffet of small children to abuse across his life and he happily did so ruining many lives. Now he is dead and instead of the relief I so craved...I have this hopeless helpless knowledge that he is still ruining my life every damn day now..all these years later. And then the battle of "them still winning" sinks me so much more. The burn of having these things wreak havoc on every facet of my adult life...the despair.
Its so incredibly painful so imagining him burning in * does give me comfort...I just wish I knew if * was anything more than a man made construction built to control people on Earth.
Im so glad that you were able to get your power back and I am truly happy for you in your situation..I wrestle with releasing it to a higher power and I hope I can get there one day.

I am a victim of childhood SA and incest by more than one of my own family members. Recently I joined this forum in search of ONE OTHER HUMAN who can understand me..and what I have come to know now as my cptsd. I have several years of abuse beginning at the age of 4 years old all the way into adulthood.
I had made it to the age of 35 (now) holding out and running hard from this tidal wave that was trying to drown me.  I am in the middle of the ocean now.

The memory that won't leave me alone today is one of my blood uncle flipping the script on me after being a "funny uncle" to me and teasing me growing up. Nothing innapropriate as a child. I feel I need to point out that my SA/incest perpetrators were first my step-grandfather, and then my older brother. Not this uncle.
However, the last time I saw him before he died was at a big family gathering at his house. Of course me being one who desperstely clings to the idea of an actual safe family, made the drive to hang out with my family. During a brief moment where I just happened to enter the kitchen and we were alone, he made a pass at me.
He made a point of looking long at me up and down and said "I swear to God (my real name), if you weren't my niece...man"


I was stunned and immediately shame filled as if my cowboy hat or my skirt somehow invited this.  This disgustimg comment from YET ANOTHER FAMILY MEMBER regarding how much they would like to have sex with me.
And not long after that he passed away unexpectedly.  I have been thinking of this and being quiet all these years whenever my dear aunts get all teary eyed and raving about L. and how much they miss him
.....and I am TRAPPED AGAIN protecting my abusers image to other family members. I am so confused as to why I was a target for so many ppl in my family? Why me? WHY ME?
I'm in so much grief I cant even breathe.  I dont understand how I even have tears left but they never stop.

Thank you sanmagic7. I completely understand your feeling. I feel like my bones are tired...every cell of my body.  I found myself thinking about this porch all day today. I decided to bring my bees' honey for everyone to try.
I thought about having a muffin, lemonade and  iced coffee ( why not right?), then curling up under a blanket and be lulled in and out by the acceptance and voices of everyone here. It is a really comforting idea.

This porch is straight out of my heart's dreams. I want to stay on this porch for an undetermined amount of time and never leave.

I don't look down on people who weren't abused in childhood, I envy them a bit to be honest, and find them fascinating. They're like unicorns to me, something precious and rare: cptsd that may still have a sense of self that was once cptsd-less! I wish I could get a glimpse of that. A sense of self that's 100% cptsd-free is too alien to me, I wouldn't be able to understand it at all,

I am terrified. Life will never be the same affter this. After I stop protecting them and start protecting myself. I have been quietly erroding for 30 years. I do not know life without swallowing my pain, being dissmissed, being ignored for the sake of their comfort, constant dissociation due to coninuing to hold up the "family" ruse face to face with my unexposed perpatrators. No one cares about the view from behind my eyes all these years. The sacrifices I MADE as the burden of the perfect FOO seemed to fall on my shoulders-the one who was a very hurt, confused and betrayed little girl. In my case, becoming a mother myself has brought on the traumas I endured, and the questions....SO MANY QUESTIONS. The obvious one being WHY. Why wasn't I protected? I was abused by the same person who tortured my mother her entire childhood. My parents left me in the care of this family member with full knowledge of who he was. I was abandoned with a monster and my brain can not unravel that mystery. I would have to be savagely murdered to put my own daughter (who coincidentally is now the age that my abuse started...and why my life is falling apart now as I relive my childhood through her.)
I am fixated on my parents negligence more than the abuse itself lately because I feel that NONE of my traumas needed to happen. My entire life could have had an entirely different trajectory and I cant understand for the life of me how my parents rationalized their decision. How they continue to rationalize this decision and are clueless as to why I am no longer able to act perfect. The denial is just too much to take.
I only get feedback when I do not provide people whatever function I am in their life. No one cares why they just resent me for not being what they want me to be.
The future with this out in the open is unknown and scaring me so much.

I have no idea what forgiveness is in the context of repeated, severe, and damaging abuse over years, by those we most needed to be able to trust.

....

What I have experienced in some cases, with some family members is letting go of my active, ongoing anger but not my distrust, keeping whatever distance is necessary to keep myself safe, and living with a cognitive dissonance that is damaging to me, but which allows me to live with love that I am unable or unwilling to let go of.

What I think is dangerous and something I have done in the past, is "forgive" and accept ongoing but more covert abuse in the form of denial, victim-blaming, scapegoating and gaslighting, and live in a kind of crazy-land of denial about it all.   Included in this toxic cocktail is a kind of patholgical gratitude when the person has caused me great harm deigns to be kind to me for any period of time. This, to me is the essence of trauma-bonding.

Thank you so much for replying to me.
I also have been living in cognitive dissonance my entire life. When your perpetrators are your own family members whom your own parents neglected you in their care and neglect to protect you from your older sibling who continued abuse....
Where else do you go but CD? I dont know any other way to be. It has been who I am my entire life I am only realizing it now.

.... I eventually gave it up as an empty word, meaningless white noise. I can look up the word in dictionaries but it doesn't mean anything to me. It's just a label. But it may just be me.

Maybe forgiveness is useful for small to medium sized experiences, the sort of ordinary day to day things that are annoying but not that dangerous. It has its limits, though. Big traumas are far beyond the scope of this theory of "forgiving". It tries to flatten them to fit it but it just doesn't work.

I don't forgive my past or current abusers. It's not that I refuse to forgive them because I "hold a grudge"

But it's all so hard to discuss. It seems almost a taboo, like social sacrilege to question forgiveness nowadays
And there's an odd ethical pressure added to it, as though doing it makes you a good person whereas not doing it makes you less than. Forgive and you'll recover! Well, that feels more like shame to me. It's cold and unforgiving toward people who are in pain.

.....My forgiving wouldn't change their behavior, or take away my pain.

I care about some of the people who hurt me....

Actually, I wouldn't want to forgive the really big things.
I think forgiveness can be dangerous if it tries to normalize the abnormal. .... The same actions would cause cptsd in anyone who would have to experience them. I think people are complex enough to feel pain and also care simultaneously. I know I am. There's no need to deny pain to feel other things alongside it. It's maybe bigger than forgiveness and more nuanced.

Besides, trauma is real. So is violence. I would ideally want them both to never, ever be normal. We need to be able to say "This is not normal, so normal theories don't apply here either. Extreme measures needed. This is the twilight zone."

Maybe?

Thank you so much for replying to me.
So many things you say are resonating here. It just brings relief to see so many of you respond with thoughts and ideas that I thought no one understands. Just being validated is such a relief. The social pressure to forgive to me is just society's way of snuffing out mental health issues and the causes of some mental health issues.  Not for the victim, so everyone else doesnt feel uncomfortable. I have been uncomfortable everyday and every minute of my entire life and Im supposed to rise up and forgive??? I will never get there.

The word and concept of forgiveness is something I tried to figure out, but in the end I realized that for my own peace I just couldn't tolerate the idea of its implications. I'm with those who've had to find alternative means to dispose of the ashes, so to speak.

Thank you so much for replying to me.
I feel EXACTLY this way. I cannot tolerate all the implications of it.  It makes me feel very bad inside when I consider forgiveness....it just seems like turning away from myself yet again and going toward darkness.

I hear you, mourningme.  I don't think I can ever forgive my father for abandoning my family, or my mother for the emotional abuse we endured from her afterwards.  How do you forgive someone who never acknowledged the harm they did?  Who never apologized?  Who never changed? 

I think forgiveness as an intellectual act is one thing -- but emotionally, it's something else.  The type of abuse that causes cptsd is much tougher to forgive than ordinary wrongs.  We survivors of cptsd have to first protect ourselves, forgive OURSELVES, and fortify our boundaries against future harm before we can take that big leap to forgive the perpetrators of our long-term suffering. 

People with cptsd tend to be tough on ourselves, self-critical.  I would recommend extending forgiveness to yourself first -- true acceptance -- before you think about forgiving those who harmed you.  Self-forgiveness and acceptance is tough for us, but necessary.

Thank you so much for replying to me.
Self-forgiveness and acceptance....that is the struggle isnt it? I wade in the ocean of self loathing and hate and shame over what happened to me and what I was manipulated into. I have recently woken up to realize that NO, a girl growing up does NOT seek out the things that happened to me. The ABUSER seeks to get their needs met by wasting an innocent child. I see that now and it has been the "levy" against the damn I have been struggling to hold up for 30 years. The water is rushing now and drowning me.

This is how I feel too.  My abusers will be judged (or forgiven) by someone or something much bigger than I. 

Thank you so much for replying to me.
As someone who was not raised with religion....this is a concept I have always struggled with.  Although I have looked in on religion from the outside and at times considered if "letting jesus save me" would truly relieve me of this pain...I cant help but be suspicious. Without intending any disrespect to anyones religious beliefs, and speaking in my personal opinion only, as someone who wasn't fed religion as a child I find it very difficult to wrap my head around it. It begs all those questions..if there is something bigger then why are some of us put through such horrors in our lives? In my case why are innocent children ruined by the evilness of some adults without consequence? And then said child grows up, battles with the consequence in their EVERY WAKING moment...and they are ridiculed into relieving all abusers of guilt. My brain and my body wholeheartedly rejects it.

Anger is important to healing, it helps us protect ourselves and get that Inner Guardian in the ring fighting for us, helping us to set and maintain boundaries, etc.  Getting stuck in the anger is not healthy though imo, it keeps us from moving forward at some point.

I can't forgive but I do understand that my parents were dealing with a lot of trauma of their own and somehow that's been enough to take the sting out (i.e., it's not me or anything I did or didn't do), and be able to move past a lot of the anger and bitterness. It's still there to a degree but it has faded into the background more and made room for other things.

Hope this is helpful, if not plse ignore.

Thank you so much for replying to me.
My anger and rage is all consuming. I have been running from it for 30years and now that i have acknowledged it, it refuses to be silenced ANY more. It is the leader of the pack as far as cptsd symptoms go, as I suffer from all the symptoms ...anger is the leader. I am firmly grounded in  it. Im not happy about it, in fact it literally eats away at me, I just cant deny it.

hey, mourningme,

to my mind, forgiveness is something individual.  some people find it to be releasing/freeing.  i'm not one of them.

there are things that have happened in my life that i can accept - they happened, i'm dealing with the consequences.  but, at the same time, i don't feel a need to forgive, and won't, unless, somewhere down the road, it seems like a constructive thing for me to do.  but, and this is a biggie, as far as i'm concerned, it will have to seem that way to me, and not because it seems that way to others.

Thank you so much for replying to me.

Yes! All I ever hear about recovery is that word and it just seems like another continuation of dissmissing and invalidating my experiences just to placate the people around me who are uncomfortable with my abuse.  Thank you for mentioning you are a therspist but dont agree with this. It really helps.