Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
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A few months back in a discussion in this group I briefly touched on the topic of one of my concerns/paranoias. The issue was that I feel very uncomfortable and on edge around feminists due to the nature of the abuse that lead to my traumas and who the abusers were. I also memtioned how one aspect of this in particular that bothers me is how often I see rants/posts/blogs around the internet where self proclaimed "feminists" argue things like it is rape if a man even looks at a woman, or that all sex is rape, etc.
At the time some group members here seemed surprised or even skeptical of such claims occuring in today's world.
Well recently I learned of articles about a case where a woman kept calling the cops and accusing her male neighbor of "telepathically raping" her. Of course in each case the police couldn't find any evidence that the neighbor was doing anything at all so the case would be dismissed.
Well eventually the woman went and illegally purchased a gun and then convinced her husband to go shoot that neighbor with it for telepathically raping her. The neighbor was shot several times in the back, but thankfully survived and the woman and her husband were arrested.
Here's a link to one article about it: http://abcnews.go.com/News/self-styled-telepathic-rape-victim-convicted-for-having-husband-shoot-man/blogEntry?id=20374844
I feel as though I might not be so on edge or paranoid around women and feminists if a satisfactory explaination could be given as to why none of the mainstream/prominent feminist groups/organizations ever seem to publicly denounce or speak out against the radical/extremist feminists who try hijacking the movement to preach about things like how all men are evil rapists by virtue of being born male.
Wouldn't it be in the best interest of actual feminists (as in the ones who are just about equality and not about hating men) to NOT let extremists highjack the feminist movement to turn it into one about hate?
For someone like me it comes across as looking like mainstream feminism condones the actions and sexist philosophies of the radicals/extremists when virtually nothing seems to be done about it. It doesn't exactly put me at ease when the only feminists who speak out against it or even say they're against it seem to be the small groups and individuals who identify as feminists, but frequently seem oblivious to what is going on in the modern generations of feminism.
At the time some group members here seemed surprised or even skeptical of such claims occuring in today's world.
Well recently I learned of articles about a case where a woman kept calling the cops and accusing her male neighbor of "telepathically raping" her. Of course in each case the police couldn't find any evidence that the neighbor was doing anything at all so the case would be dismissed.
Well eventually the woman went and illegally purchased a gun and then convinced her husband to go shoot that neighbor with it for telepathically raping her. The neighbor was shot several times in the back, but thankfully survived and the woman and her husband were arrested.
Here's a link to one article about it: http://abcnews.go.com/News/self-styled-telepathic-rape-victim-convicted-for-having-husband-shoot-man/blogEntry?id=20374844
I feel as though I might not be so on edge or paranoid around women and feminists if a satisfactory explaination could be given as to why none of the mainstream/prominent feminist groups/organizations ever seem to publicly denounce or speak out against the radical/extremist feminists who try hijacking the movement to preach about things like how all men are evil rapists by virtue of being born male.
Wouldn't it be in the best interest of actual feminists (as in the ones who are just about equality and not about hating men) to NOT let extremists highjack the feminist movement to turn it into one about hate?
For someone like me it comes across as looking like mainstream feminism condones the actions and sexist philosophies of the radicals/extremists when virtually nothing seems to be done about it. It doesn't exactly put me at ease when the only feminists who speak out against it or even say they're against it seem to be the small groups and individuals who identify as feminists, but frequently seem oblivious to what is going on in the modern generations of feminism.
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Here is my new brother, copper :) He's so tiny! Moo and Tuck were ok with him on first meeting. Rocket due to his severe aggression will never meet Cooper.
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https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTDeA9Wxg/
And let me tell ya, being told I was masculine? Talk about a hit to the ego... *sigh* And my hubby wonders why I think he'll ditch me for someone cuter? *grr*
Y'know, this is gonna sound a little weird(er)? but I have often sat in a corner at a caf or similar and just watched *other* people's body language and recorded how I reacted to it. Just strangers walking by, talking. E.g., "There's a couple walking together. Her head is down, he's looking away from her, his hand is on her shoulder . My reaction is X (she doesn't want to be there)." Then I'd go back a few days later, look at my notes, and add on, "Or maybe the situation was Y...." It helped me conscious process alternatives to my reactions, when I wasn't *in* the situation. I did this waaaay before therapy---it was actually part of a stress management course I took for free.
We can people-watch for free. Or th ecost of a cup of cocoa at a Starbucks. Whichever.
Odd to me that you associate yoga with females. My instructors were male. You can find male yoga instructors on YouTube, if taht's any help? And in general any quiet home fitness routines are good for giving our psyches a break from the world.
Wel, no suggestion I make is anything but sucky, so I'll quit for real this time, but good luck to you.
I've looked over this thread several times, unsure of whether or not to reply, but decided this morning I should. First I wanted to say I'm terribly sorry for what you've had to go through in life. I wholeheartedly understand the pain and suffering that stems from emotional abuse at the hand of females. I am a female and my abusers are female, my most traumatic abuse occurred by women in my life. I am no stranger to abuse from men, but it has little to no impact on my life today. My first and most detrimental female abuser was my mother. I cannot even begin to tell of the horror I endured, because the story would take the rest of my day alone to even begin, but I'd like to give you a couple stories. When I was very young, my sister and I were fairly well behaved besides the occasional sibling rivalry. Once we began to argue amongst ourselves about who would get the last piece of candy, my mother steps into the room, snatches up the candy, puts it in her mouth and proceeds to fall to the floor. Here I am, crying and shaking my mother desperately trying to wake up her up, unaware of what is going on. For 30 minutes she laid there motionless, then stood up, walked into her room and locked the door. Later that day she pulled me aside to tell me that when I am bad, I am going to kill her and that I will be sent away to foster homes to be abused. That's the year my sister developed an intense phobia of death, that's the same year I developed a phobia of losing my mother...I became consumed in the game because I knew she was right, she was the only family I had, I needed to behave, I needed to be perfect. When I was 15, my mother held me up against the wall calling me a whore, telling me I was going to go to hell and that the world would be a better place if I just killed myself. After hours on end of being belittled, I told her what she wanted to hear that I would go kill myself if she just left me alone. She secretly recorded me saying it and that was my first time being admitted into a psych ward. By the time I was 21, I was addicted to drugs, I was unhappy with my life and unable to succeed because I was too afraid if I left home the abuse would fall on my little sister. I was reminded on a daily basis from childhood onward that I was worthless, pathetic, I wasn't worth the life I lived, so at 21 I tried to take my own life. I'd be manipulated and abused to the point where I did not own my life, my mother owned me, she owned my soul and my emotions to the very core and I was going to take it back the only way I knew how.
I barely survived my drug overdose and I had to be hospitalized for quite sometime after, but that's when I realized my worth. The courts ordered me to be involuntarily committed and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I met a social worker, who believed me, for the first time in my life I told this horror story and he believed. My mother came to visit complaining, telling them she was my mother and should be allowed to take me home right that very minute. I remember he stopped her and asked if she always talked about me as if I were her possession. She was completely baffled and stormed out of there in anger. He saw it first hand and he completely understood, he stayed by my side and validated my feelings. He encouraged me to find my voice and to flee the abuse at home. It was because of him when I left, I found a job immediately and left home. The job I found however, was where I met my second female abuser, but in the end I was strong enough to step away once again.
Today I am loved and I love me. I don't let any man or woman make me feel like less of a person. I'm quiet, I'm introverted, but I'm not creepy, I'm just me, I'm normal and I'm happy. This wasn't something I could do on my own, I needed therapy to get this far...surprisingly it was a female therapist who helped me reach my new level of confidence. As easy as it would have been for me to dismiss women for the pain they caused me, I know it's not all women. There's good and bad amongst all people, but you have to find yourself and acknowledge your suffering, then hope to find the good in people. It exist, they are out there, you can't give up on the good in the world, no matter how many people male or female knock you down. You'll never let your abusers win if you are willing to see yourself for what you have inside, you went through hell and are still standing today...that means something huge, it means you have the strength within you and no one can take that away from you.
It is legal to do the recording thing where I live, and I've tried it before. The results of that are why I listed the presence of security cameras as a safety net instead of a personal audio recording device or having witnesses present. It's generally too much work for an abuser to trash a security camera and destroy whatever the footage is being stored on. Also, unlike witnesses a security camera doesn't turn a blind eye to what is happening or lie about what happened.
There was a social experiment done and filmed that studied issues like this and the video footage can be found online. In the experiment a male and a female actor posed as a couple in a physical domestic dispute in the middle of a busy park. When it was the woman assaulting the man all the onlookers sided with her and/or cheered her on. When the experiment was repeated later under the same conditions (albeit with new actors I think), but with the man being the violent one (doing the thing that the violent female actir had done in the previous experiment) onlookers chastized the man abd threatened to call the cops.
@DoooOver:
I've started a few discussions on DS in the past several months seeking help finding any possible resources available to me where I live. Plenty of people responded to those discussions with every conceivable possible option for finding treatment and I even combed through listings of every therapist/counselor/social-worker/doctor/etc within 100 miles of me who has any training with treating trauma or dissociative issues.
The end results have been that my state has a crippling shortage of resources for those with disabilites or mental health issues. The shelters in the city I live in (biggest in the state) are constantly filled beyond capacity. The state government has refused to expand Medicaid to cover the people who can't afford insurance and there is no way for those people to get Medicaid either. Even if they could most doctors and such here won't accept it since it doesn't pay them enough. The state also cut funding to services that help those with disabilities or mental health problems by about 2/3, which caused most of said services to shut down. The ones that didn't go under either can't afford to take new applicants or are services that require applicants to live in poverty and to have no income other than the meager amount of money the services gives them (which can only be spent on meds/doctors/things that they approve of).
On top of all that, the state I live in already has a higher cost of living due to geographic location, which makes services and therapy even more expensive. It gets worse though. My state also has the highest rates of rape and domestic abuse in the country.
As for the doctors/therapists/etc I looked up, there are only a handful qualified to treat the types of issues I'm dealing with that are within driving distance, accept my insurance and are male. Of those only about half a dozen also do sliding scale payments and/or aren't "credit card only". Unfortunately, even with the sliding scale payments and insurance they are prohibitively expensive for me at my level of income.
And yes, I have also looked at the free or nearly free services like hiring the in-training people at the college. The main issue there that prevents me from going to them is that it's either go to them or not go to them, but keep my insurance. (It's a complicated matter involving incompatible office hours, my work/school schedules and meeting the minimum required income to qualify to keep my indurance.)
Lastly, any treatment I get has to be something I can go to without friends/family finding out due to safety reasons.
My hope is to be able to get a decent paying job (with benefits) soon and eventually save up enough to move out and into a place of my own. That way I will hopefully have the privacy, money and insurance benefits needed to safely acquire treatment.