This is a good video. Run if a therapist tells you that you are unconsciously seeking abusers. In other words, that's called "blaming the victim". In abuse recovery, you need to learn to discern the abusers and avoid them. Theramin Tree's sounds like he would be a great therapist. I warned about "bad therapy" in this article: "Analyzing Good and Bad Therapy".
Yes shame is an ongoing struggle with the abuse. That's a cloud my abusers threw upon me. There is always this feeling of "never being good enough". I feel it all the time, and it's struggle. I live in a more affluent community where achievement is very important, and well, that's hard to deal with at times.
One's life is centered around hopping over goal posts, they'll never reach because abusers always move them up. One reason traditional Christianity no longer works for me, is the religion especially in fundamentalist form focuses on shame. I love when Theramin Trees brings up "having to grovel to gods and ghosts". My fundamentalist past literally taught us to beg God for forgiveness sometimes it seemed just for existing. My struggles regarding "cruel gods" has continued. I sometimes do ask how can people have faith in something so mean to them?
I still fight that little voice that screams the apartment is too messy, you have not "done enough" and I think about the shame unloaded for my body that society has added to. I did learn to shut down a lot of shame, but it's hard, it is a stealer of happiness. I grew up in a total malignant "shaming environment". Nothing was ever good enough. Therapists used to work with me to shut down the "hypercritical" voice of my abusers but that's the worse of what these narcissists and sociopaths do to people, they teach children to shame themselves from the inside who carry that into adulthood. This too is what leaves people who were abused as children to open to predators. In my case, I got tired of trying to please or "be enough". People definitely treated me better as a result of this. I do grieve over the lost years with the voices inside of being told I was never "good enough".
There's times I have felt shame over not fight back more especially when I became an adult. In one comic diary, I drew "budgie" asking "Why didn't I run away?" I didn't utilize my then more robust but about to fail health to get out of Dodge. Sadly that's one thing they program you to do, blame yourself for everything. I talked about my 9 years of no contact but when you are gone that long, you can see from a new vantage what was done. The darkness of what was done to me was made evident like the fact my mother refused to be seen in public with me for over 20 years. One thing I started to think was analyzing other people's choices. I was not responsible for what they chose to do. That was a place of freedom as well, it was not my fault. Just like the guy in the video who got jumped by attackers he fought off successfully.
I found the section about "responsibility for everything bad that happened" to be interesting. That's one place where my abusers almost seemed to expect omnipotence. I was told "There's no such thing as an accident" which basically was telling back then a mere child, "You are not allowed to make mistakes". As I grew older I was able to see what twisted individuals they truly were. They never took responsibility for anything. Pawel's experiences were like my own. I was told I was "bad luck" and "cursed". Even with so many bad health things, they seriously blamed me all the time for getting sick.
I like the part where Theramin Trees talks about how shame based individuals are trained to defer judgments to others. That's a major problem. I got stuck in that mode. Autism complicated this because of the forced masking to survive. "Is it okay to think this?", "Is it okay to feel this?" This is one place where extreme religion led me down the wrong road and I got involved with that deliverance minister.
One commenter on this video [Skyewint] said something interesting about the neurodivergent [people with autism etc]
"While I am aware this is not something you explicitly address, I wanted to mention it.
This is the reason why so many people with neurodevelopmental conditions end up having many other mental illnesses. They (or "we", since I am speaking as one of these people) are CONSTANTLY showered with criticism and/or derogatory statements towards us and people who act like us. We hear consistently how awful we are at socializing (since our difference makes it harder to relate to others), or how rude it is not to look at people in the eyes (for autistic people in particular, like me), how we should stop fidgeting (when this is near-impossible to stop for many people with these conditions), or stop counting, or "act normal", etc.
This consistent treatment wears us down and frequently results in intense internal shame, especially if we don't grow up knowing that we have a named condition. Parents reject diagnostic labels much of the time even when children are diagnosed, so their children "are not restrained by a label". But, rather than having the label of a clinical condition, we get labelled as "weird", "wrong", or "broken". It's incredibly unsurprising that this constant treatment of cruelty results in mental illness such as depression, anxiety, personality disorders, dissociation, etc.
For anyone else reading this who is neurodivergent - you're damn strong to still be here and your difference, regardless of how disabling it is, does not make you "broken".
You start looking to other people as for answers on how to fix your life. That opens the door wide to abuse. Later I would ask myself, "What did I really want?" There's things about life I want to change now, but I think of the few years I got when I was doing what I really wanted to do even with limitations of health and money. I never wanted to be a business woman or someone in the suburbs with the perfect house. When one is invalidated to such a deep level even developing a self-trust takes time. "Become our own Socratic questioner". He's right this will allow you to stand against the group. The development of this took me not only out of a toxic family but a toxic religion as well.
This is a really good question, "Do people who provoke raw survival instincts deserve any place in your life?" The answer is No. I don't blame myself for the feelings of fear I had around my monsters. I knew the book "The Gift of Fear" would have told me to run fast.
The section in public shaming was interesting too. I realized as I walked out the door, the family was more invested in their appearances than the truth. Even the cousins quelled all responsibility and tried to project their emotions onto others. Their character flaws were glaring to me, after a lifetime of being told what was wrong with me, I came to see their immense failures and shallow values. After my recovery, turning the tables was a technique, I used. It was a way I could shut down people who focused on criticizing me. In years past I would grovel, "Please like me" but I realized how much hypocrisy was out there, especially when people demanded expectations they themselves did not meet.
It occurred to me that "lack of empathy" wasn't just for one or two narcissists in the family but went through the family like a poison. I heard nonsense about "unbreakable bonds", one aunt who blew me off would go on about how "strong" and "close" the family was. That was ironic to me. I took a "long hard cold look" at mine too. My family sadly operated as a faceless mob. I can say with ease that I did try to talk to individuals one on one before my last departure.
This was a good video. If someone makes you feel bad about yourself, it's better not to have them in your life.
