Carrying the of pain of giving in

A harrowing aspect of ritual abuse, is the creation of conditions for the victim to submit to the will of the abusers. They want their victims to willingly do things a free person would refuse to do. To participate willingly in the disgusting perversions of human scum. This is their confirmation that the victims mind has been broken in – comprehensively defeated. Like an animal broken in for a life of exploitation.

Abusers give their victims the choice of how much suffering to endure. There is the choice of being tortured, or cooperating. But submission is not enough to avoid punishment. The victim must appear to want to be a slave. As a victim i chose to perform, in order to minimize my suffering. This meant pretending to like what they insisted i do. At the time this meant my suffering was greatly reduced. But there was an unknown cost.

I was forced to exchange short term physical suffering for much less intense indefinite psychological suffering. The suffering of having given in to their abuse, of cooperating with it. Of pretending I was happy to do as they demanded. I didnt avoid the pain, i transformed and postponed it. I set it aside and carried it with me all my life. That pain of having decided to pretend for them. A decision i could never be happy with.

Now i am discarding that pain i carried for half a century – by realizing what was intentionally done to my mind against my will. That pain influenced my life and my relationships. It pulled my life in its direction, of accepting things and people i should have rejected, and pretending they were not bad.

To surrender to survive, is a suffering of its own.

Endlessly Trying to Make Up for Trivial Slights

Recently i noticed a lifelong pattern of memories that kept arising. They are memories of when i did something that others didnt like or didnt approve of. Not ones that resulted in any harm to anyone. Memories of seemingly little consequence. But they kept arising.

I know that when something keeps arising in my mind, that it is because of an unresolved issue. But even when i recognised the pattern of the memories, i still was not able to resolve the cause in a reasonable way.

When i asked myself why it would be so important for me to respond to people disapproving of me, trying to make up for things, rather than let it go – i realized that it was about avoiding suffering. I understood that it matched a pattern from my child abuse.

Those who abused me, justified it by telling me that i was bad, that they hated me, that it was my fault. Again and again, so that it was deeply embedded in my mind. I was in a situation that i was not able to escape. I realized that my solution to that situation, was to try to convince the abusers that i wasnt bad, that I was likeable, that i could make it up to them and show i was acceptable. I didnt understand that they were abusing me because they needed to abuse, needed to destroy another person. They probably justified their abuse by saying those things, and engaged in self-delusion. But the reality was that they needed to destroy others, and they chose me – not because of me, but because I was the opportunity presented to them.

So i stuck with that strategy of trying to convince people that were upset with me, that i was good and likeable – by trying to make up for things, by trying to show that I cared and wanted to do what is right, wanted to correct my error. I kept trying to make up for things i had done, that seemingly upset others (or not) – but were in fact trivial. It was even true that i feared upsetting others and often assumed without evidence that i had done that – when i actually hadnt.

It is this one, trying to make up for things i had supposedly done wrong, that was the core of my delusional useless strategy – while always assuming that any problem was due to me. It was my fault, as i was taught by my abusers. Never realizing that it was a misunderstanding, a pointless waste of effort. I would even stay around abusive people so as to practice my useless strategy. Just knowing that someone was unhappy with me, caused me to stick around to try to make amends – as if i had no choice to leave.

Im yet to dig up that part that believes in and uses that strategy. I hope that when i do, i will stop wasting my time trying to please people, trying to make up for negative interactions and make them like me. Instead I can just say sorry. The other person can let me know if they want any compensation, if sorry isnt enough for them. Then I can decide if i want to compensate or not.

Then i can put more of my effort into listening to and following the guidance of my higher self.

Separation from my body to escape suffering

These days, self-integrity is really important to me. I will sacrifice comfort, convenience and opprotunity to retain and regain my self-integrity. I understand the consequence of a divided mind – weighing me down with internal conflicts and the energy required to keep track of all the inconsistencies and when to allow or forbid each one.

As a child, i had no understanding of my self-integrity or its value. I was motivated by the experience of the moment. I cared about minimizing suffering and maximizing enjoyment. This meant mentally separating from my body to minimise the suffering of abuse. As the abuse included my head, i also separated from my head, my own face, and restricted my personal space to a small volume within my skull. I created an alternative reality in there to compensate for the loss of my connection to my physical reality. A place to hang out in my mind.

I had been aware of this separation, but recently i became aware of something much more difficult to admit to myself. Not only did i withdraw from the abuse, I participated in it in a way that seemed to me to reduce the suffering. That meant proactively behaving in a way that I believed would make the abusers nicer to me, and it probably worked. Yet it meant pretending to be attracted to, and turned on my abusers, who i found disgusting.

This is not news to me. For decades I have had disturbing ‘flashbacks’ of such appeasement. These were so disgusting to me – an awful experience to have such things arise in my mind without warning. Despite knowing this, I tried to avoid it, to make it go away. I couldnt. I just didnt want to deal with the idea that i helped them abuse me. When I recently admitted that I did this kiind of appeasement, I released a lot of grief about it.

Some people describe this as “fawning”, the act of trying to appease the abuser to lessen the abuse – its part of the set “Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn, Feign, Flirt” – that describes the different responses to trauma.

PostEdit – A commenter reminded me of “Feign”, and Im adding “Flirt” to the list to make 6. I also think there may be a reason to add a word for hypochondria to the list, as some use that, to guilt the abuser into not abusing.

For me, appeasing the abuser is an extremely offensive thing, its disgusting. Those pedophiles are human scum. Especially difficult to admit is pretending to be attracted to and to act as if I liked the abuser. I understand that it meant less torture, less nastiness from the abuusers. But as a child, i was unable to see the bigger picture, to see the consequences of this. I chose to perform to avoid suffering. I was in a mindset of present experience, and did what it took to make that present experience less awful, less traumatic. I had no awareness of the deep harmful effects in my mind. Only now that I am healing from the abuse am i becoming aware of the unforseen consequences.

I forgive my young self, for doing what he could to lessen the suffering. I will continue with my work to heal all the harm that was done to my mind. It is such a relief to purge these trapped conflicts from my mind.

Because of me, suffering is forever.

I dug further into a recollection of being tortured, and in the process I realized that at some point in my early childhood, I concluded that this experience of suffering would never end, and the only relief that was possible was through doing and being as my abusers wanted.
I think that they knew the importance of this belief in making me give in to them, be ‘resigned to my fate’. They intentionally pushed that conclusion and belief onto me, as it made me give in to them.
The abusers reinforced these beliefs by saying that this is what I am for, that I deserve it, that I’m being punished for being no good, that I did something wrong, that I’m not good enough, etc. Around and around, until through their repeated guidance about cause and effect, the accusations got stuck in my head and I kept them going by myself.
Beliefs about my state of being, my unchangeable characteristics. Not about my situation, or those around me, but about myself.
The abuse continued, and the accusations continued, so my conclusions and beliefs seemed correct, the only explanation. They were cemented in place. I had no evidence otherwise.
I had no opportunity to question the conclusions because my mind was so full of chaotic thinking. I couldn’t wish that I could have a better life, that I could be a different person in a different situation, like other people I encountered in my life – such the kids at school. I was only able to wish that I wasn’t me, which reinforced being me as I saw it. I didnt understand enough about other lives to wish for them, I only understood my life, to wish it wasn’t. At times when I didnt have awareness of the abuse that happened to me while being mentally controlled, I still carried my beliefs about my characteristics, and went about my life according to them. I knew I was different but I didnt know that the beliefs I held were one of the reasons why. At that time I didnt even understand that I had beliefs. I just saw it as how things are, how I was.
Then those beliefs affected everything that went afterward. I responded to every situation as if I would never be free of that life that I had, that I was in this situation forever. So my motivation was always to reduce or remove the suffering, as there would never be anything else. There was no attempt to escape or think about getting away, as that wasn’t a possibility. I learned to live with it, work with it, manage it. That suffering, that abuse became my life, my existence. Not only was it the only thing I knew, it was the only thing worth knowing, because I had come to believe that it would last forever. There was no need to learn any other way. Other ways were irrelevant to me – impossible and inconceivable.
This one belief is a vital factor in taking on this way of thinking and living as an only strategy, to never seek any other strategy because there cannot be any other possibility.
This belief that it will last forever goes together with the belief that I am deserving of this and that I am not worthy of anything better – they reinforce each other and go around in a loop, a ‘vicious cycle’.