I am sorry for what happened to you. The abuse you went through as a child would take a toll on the self-esteem of most of us. Abuse makes us feel ashamed and angry at ourselves and weak, but nobody deserves to be abused. Bad things happening to you doesn't mean you attracted it or earned, only the abuser is to blame for what they did, though manipulators often make innocent people think they are to blame and say things like, "you had it coming" or "look what you made me do." From what I have heard from relationship counselors and read in books often, it is often the nicest of people who bad folks prey on, someone they think they can take advantage of. Please don't blame yourself. That in spite of all that your "friends" and "family" put you through you still posses the sensitivity to reflect on what happened and recognize it as abuse, rather than go out and hurt someone else, speaks well of you.
That's a lovely sentiment, and I would love to be able to say that I have never abused anyone in the way I have been abused, but it would probably be a lie if I did...
I don't really blame people for abusing me...or I try not to, I should say, because blame has definitely been thrown around in arguments in the past. I think blaming other people for circumstances is a form of psychological abuse in itself, because it generally follows a lack of recognition or acknowledgement of one's own culpability, and there are always two sides to every story...I mean, someone can be treating you badly and it might not be excusable, but there may also be a reason why, and it may be something to do with your own behaviour. It'd be far too easy to blame other people for all my problems, because most of my problems do stem from the way I've been treated by others, but they're still my problems that I need to be wholly responsible for and work to change or just live with. Maybe that's just trying to rationalise and justify the way I've been treated, but the fact remains that there have been times that I've deliberately stooped to the same level, so I have absolutely no claim to moral high ground here...it doesn't matter who started it. I should know better.
I am often more focused on someone else's side of things rather than my own, which is why I blame myself for things most of the time - you will never get a straight answer out of someone if you ask them about these things, after all. Having an honest and reasonable discussion about these things is damn near impossible. But I am acutely aware that I am not a nice person, and that I can say things that might offend other people. I don't attack people personally, but that doesn't mean that people don't take what I say personally, and even though I am not wholly responsible for other people's thoughts and feelings, I am partially responsible for generating negativity because it was caused by my own actions, so yeah. I can only really play damage control in these situations...this is why I type an awful lot sometimes. Or I could just not talk at all...which I frequently do. Isolating myself from other people is better than hurting them, or having them hurt me. I can't have friends when all I do is question their motives and sincerity. My parents have plenty of reasons to hate me, so even if I can't and won't make excuses for them, I can understand why they treat me the way they do. I don't think psychological abuse is necessarily always so clear cut. Recognition you might be doing something to cause this is not enough by itself, and there can be no change when you don't know what you're doing wrong and how you can fix it.
Note that I'm only talking about psychological abuse, because as far as I'm concerned physical abuse is an absolute thing. You can choose not to physically attack someone. If it's a "knee-jerk reaction" or whatever you can choose to change this, because it's easily recognised behaviour that is absolutely, unequivocally wrong. Unless you don't possess the cognitive ability to recognise that it's wrong, there is no excuse at all. There are few things in life that are black-and-white, but physical abuse is definitely one of those things. I was actually quite violent as a child because that was how my father treated me, but this was something I chose to stop before I entered my teens, because I recognised that it was a bad thing and was ashamed of the way I had been behaving. I have quite a strong hatred for physical violence now because of this, and I doubt I'll ever forgive myself for the way I acted as a child, even though I can recognise that on some level I am not entirely responsible for my behaviour because this was something I had grown up with and subsequently learned from my father, who was responsible for my development. It doesn't matter, though. I still shouldn't have emulated him.
I think that people will often hurt others because they don't want to feel hurt themselves - this is why people rarely think of others, or can't admit that they're wrong, or will fight so hard to defend themselves and justify their actions even though they know on some level that they're being abusive, because unless you're a complete sociopath you're not blind to the feelings of others. Nobody likes to feel bad, after all. It's just common sense.
But honestly, it makes me kinda sad to think about it...a little empathy goes a long way, and it's impossible to avoid feeling bad sometimes. People would probably find they felt bad a lot less if they thought of other people more, but not thinking of other people at all is generally easier, so that's the optimum pathway. Which is why psychological abuse is so common - everyone is trying to one-up everyone else to feel good about themselves. It's basically the norm of our society to make other people feel lesser so that we can make ourselves feel greater, and if that isn't psychological abuse then I don't know what is. Most people would probably balk at that idea, because "abuse" is such a strong word with extremely negative connotations, but...well, as someone who has lived with these things for the majority of my life, I see it more as a pervasive pattern of behaviour that is reflected in a lot of small things that are incosequential by themselves but build up over time. I don't think abuse "just starts"...or if it does, then it takes time to recognise. The mind has a way of only remembering the bad things too, or of making things seem worse than they actually are...my parents remember my childhood VERY differently, for example. Sometimes I wonder about these things...I mean, it has been acknowledged that I have been abused, and having that external validation has helped me find some closure, but there is a definite gap between my perspective and other people's.
"Treat others how you would like to be treated" is a much preached but rarely practiced philosophy in this day and age. Well, I suppose most people don't care, and don't expect other people to either. Maybe some of us are just "too sensitive" or whatever.
...and yeah, I know there are a lot of assumptions about the thought processes of others in there, but it's just what I've observed. Maybe expecting the worst from others leads to my experiencing that.
This was a long and confusing post, but I have a lot of strong feelings about abuse, and it's something I have spent a lot of time thinking about, both as a victim and someone who is worried that I may have been inadvertently emulating the behaviour I so despise sometimes. Because these things have a way of being passed on, and I'd prefer it if the buck stopped with me.
