Incest Survivors Support Group
Incest refers to any sexual activity between closely related persons that is illegal or socially taboo. Consensual adult incest is very rare. Incest between adults and prepubescent or adolescent children is a form of child sexual abuse that has been shown to be one of the most extreme forms of childhood trauma. If you or a loved one is a survivor of incest, join the group...
I've been thinking about the way my abusive family had so much power over me...enough that I acted in ways that were so clearly not in my interest at all.
I think there's a complex process at work in abusive families of any kind. It also happens in adult relationships, in business, in religious orders, etc.
The word enthrallment comes from Middle English and it meant back then to place someone in bondage, like a serf or an indentured servant. Isn't this what happened to us? One or more people in our family ignored our own welfare in favor of their pleasure and used us like we were some kind of personal toy. That's enslavement.
I think we've all seen how our abusers manipulated us and often manipulated the family dynamic to keep us in line...with lies, invalidation, undermining of our self-esteem, manipulation of our sexuality for their own purposes, grooming us like domestic animals trained to serve humans.
I think this process of enthrallment goes beyond our abuse, it's common throughout human society. Sometimes it's for a good purpose, like in military training meant to save the lives of soldiers when they're in combat and win just wars. Drill sergeants reduce recruits to slaves and abuse them because they know from experience that being tough on them might keep them alive in the horrors of combat.
Do you feel like you were enthralled by your abuser? Did he or she try to make you love him/her? Does this enthrallment still haunt you? Does it still call to you?
I think there's a complex process at work in abusive families of any kind. It also happens in adult relationships, in business, in religious orders, etc.
The word enthrallment comes from Middle English and it meant back then to place someone in bondage, like a serf or an indentured servant. Isn't this what happened to us? One or more people in our family ignored our own welfare in favor of their pleasure and used us like we were some kind of personal toy. That's enslavement.
I think we've all seen how our abusers manipulated us and often manipulated the family dynamic to keep us in line...with lies, invalidation, undermining of our self-esteem, manipulation of our sexuality for their own purposes, grooming us like domestic animals trained to serve humans.
I think this process of enthrallment goes beyond our abuse, it's common throughout human society. Sometimes it's for a good purpose, like in military training meant to save the lives of soldiers when they're in combat and win just wars. Drill sergeants reduce recruits to slaves and abuse them because they know from experience that being tough on them might keep them alive in the horrors of combat.
Do you feel like you were enthralled by your abuser? Did he or she try to make you love him/her? Does this enthrallment still haunt you? Does it still call to you?
There's just no way someone can even imagine what it's like to live in fear every day of your life, Butterfly. You would be surprised at how many of us have been through this, I've met many people in my life who share that feeling of fear deep inside that never really goes away.
I think it changes you and makes you into a different person...and studies of abused children confirm that. We see the world in a different light.
But still, life goes on.
David Brenner, the comedian who was on the Tonight Show years ago...he said on a talk show that he got beat up a lot when he was growing up. He said he was always afraid when he was a kid.
;
But the reality is that I'm old now, and I'm ill with ME/CFS...and I'm living on very little money. That doesn't make me a candidate for a relationship anymore. If I haven't developed any really close bonds with anyone by now, it's not going to happen.
I had friends at one time, and lots of brief involvements with women. But I never got really close to anyone emotionally. I think it's a fact that many abused children never do form close personal bonds with anyone in their adult life. I went through a lot of severe trauma during adulthood, so that made it even worse for me.
Life is just that way sometimes, there are a lot of people in the world just like me. Life isn't like they portray it on TV and in the movies. We reach a point where we have to accept certain things in life.
I'm just trying to find some peace of mind in my senior years, and it seems like I might be able to do that at least.
I do wish child abuse would be taken seriously as the terrible crime it really is. In my state, abused children are often returned to their abusers by social workers in order to "keep the family together". I find that appalling. I follow these stories in the news, and I've noticed that these children often wind up being killed.
it's like a hot, heavy stone i carry around in my chest - burning through me and weighing me down. i can't let him go and move on because he's always there...that burning ache inside me. but being with him is the most self-destructive thing imaginable...for both of us.
most of the time i feel i'm on the verge of crumbling into dust because i can't handle the pressure of it all. so i try to distract myself with other things..and others...
it's a very messy and drawn-out thing, this healing process.
if someone had intervened, a lot of things that ended up happening wouldn't have ever happened.
Well, there is no special power that boys have, we were just as vulnerable to abuse as girls. It didn't make us tougher or more manly, it made us weaker and more susceptible to being bullied and abused outside the home.
Children grow up strong when they are loved and cherished in a caring and safe family, not when they live in fear every day of their lives. I was malnourished, sickly, and plagued with anxiety and suicidal thoughts as a child. And NONE of that was my fault, I did not have defective genes as some have suggested.
I was abused, and that's what an abused child looks like. They grow up and become adults who are plagued by addictions, depression, physical illnesses, and failed relationships. The truth is that statistically, abused children are simply not as successful in life as those who had the benefit of a loving environment as children. Most of us "never amount to anything", those are the cold, hard facts.
The numbers don't lie. Life is just a lot tougher for us than it is for everyone else.
I am by no means a Pollyanna but if you read the descriptions for the support groups on DS, I think you'll find tougher fates than ours. I agree though that we were left emotionally scarred and none of it was right and I'd like the universe to set it right because I know I can't.
That doesn't mean we have no chance, it just means we enter the game of life without the tools to deal with things effectively. So we
often don't do very well...that's the outcome one would expect. I think of it as an uphill climb on a steep slope...with most other people walking on level ground. It doesn't mean we can't get anywhere, it just means that it's much more difficult for us...so we fail more often.
It's appalling that these so-called experts fail to take abuse against boys by women seriously. I think they must not grasp the fundamentals of abuse.
Even after being celibate nearly four years, I still value myself based on my sexual nature. Building a new value system takes so much hard work. I feel that is the key for me to be successful in a relationship, which is one area of my life where I have been an abysmal failure.
I do think we can set goals and just know that we can climb the steeper hill and walk the longer road and get there, but we do need encouragement from friends and to get away from the bullies and the abusers from the past.
Looking back and trying to find out why things went wrong for me so often, I'm beginning to see that I was too easily influenced by others. It seems likely this came from being controlled and emotionally abused by my father, my sister, and the strict religious schools I attended. They taught me to be submissive and obedient, and always try to please those in authority.
With this kind of training, I approached life with a vulnerability to controlling people, exactly like my two sisters. They married bullying, controlling, selfish husbands. I kept getting mixed up with people who led me into bad situations when I should have been thinking for myself. Then after my mother died, I went to live with father again. It seemed like a good idea...I was not well physically or mentally at the time and he was in bad shape too.
But then he went back to his old ways of controlling and abusing me with a lot of undermining and enthrallment. I resisted, but he usually got his way on things. I tended to give in just to avoid all the stink of his tirades. But I was fooling myself to think I could "handle" him.
You're right, Dragonfly. To succeed in life we need support and we need to stay clear of those who would control and abuse us. We have to admit that we're susceptible to bad influences. Denial just does not work.
We owe it to ourselves to build our damaged self-esteem, try to develop a healthy sex life if we can, and try to make a life for ourselves out of all the wreckage of the past.
I know it's late for me to be making these life choices, but Dad is gone now, I live alone, and I'm working on my personal defenses both mentally and physically. I'm trying to purge all the indoctrination out of my mind.
Dad always discouraged me from exercising, despite being a star athlete in high school. I can see now that he was afraid of me and he wanted me to be weak and controllable. He did the same thing to my mother and my sisters...calling us weak and making us dependent on him. I strongly suspect he sexually abused me and my sisters when we were very young and he was afraid we would remember and turn on him. I have good reasons to suspect that.
So now I'm back to regular exercise and I'm trying to build my self-esteem and confidence, trying to get rid of all these self-defeating habits of negative thinking that were pounded into my brain. The first step in the process of dealing with a problem is accepting that there is a problem. That can be the hardest step. But clear memories of sexual, emotional, and physical abuse by my sister and others are surfacing now, and I'm trying to understand it all...trying to figure out who I really am and why I'm such a f******* mess.