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Ever notice how, when you complain about abusive adults or bullies in your past, people always want to speak up for the abuser or bully? It usually goes like this: you complain about someone at work/school/social event who pushed you around (usually verbally, by shaming you, but sometimes it's even physical intimidation), and you're hoping that your listener(s) will sympathize with you and express solidarity with you. But instead, you get crap like, "Oh, try to understand his feelings; he probably had a bad day." "Don't be so hard on her; she probably just has low self-esteem." "Well, he must have a difficult home life, and that's why he acts that way." WHAT?? WHAT??? WHAT THE HELL???? They're actually TAKING THE ABUSER'S SIDE; NOT YOURS. I see it in journalism all the time, hear it in conversation all the time. WHO'S SIDE ARE YOU ON, JERK? I've even heard therapists do this. It would be bad enough if they did this for everyone, but do they ever do it FOR YOU? "Oh, try to understand his passiveness; he probably never learned how to stand up for himself." "Don't be so hard on her; she's awkward and shy because people shamed her in the past." "Well, just because he's the target of shaming and intimidation, doesn't make him a loser." Oh no no no; they don't take YOUR side and apologize for YOU; they silently judge you. "Loser." "Wuss." "Wimp." "Chump." Maybe they don't even do it silently. I don't believe for a minute that "their intentions are good, even though they say the wrong thing." No, it's an ingrained habit of sucking up to the abuser because they admire the abuser's power (at least subconsciously) and feel uncomfortable around vulnerability. What's the problem, jerks? You think vulnerability is some kind of virus you might catch from us? I know perfectly well i'm not going to change any minds or behaviors with this post. The people who need to hear this aren't reading this Forum. But for us who have been wounded, sometimes it helps if we can at least name the problem and shake our fists at it. So, for the record: when i complain about abusive assholes, don't respond by making excuses for them. For once, please show me that you're on MY side instead of THEIR side.

My mother is probably one of the most hypocritical person I have ever met in my life. I was rejected by my mother since the day I was born mainly because of the reason that she did not feel any love or attachment towards me and that would possibly be due to the reason of the matter of the fact that she got an arranged marriage that was absolutely loveless. The weakness in her resolve further deteriorated her character to an abysmal level. She belonged to a religious conservative family background as the daughter of a farmer who was also a holy man who had quite a significant number of adherents or followers who worshiped him like God. Imagine how much pressure it would bring on a liberal person of my stature when you are in the position of being a grandson to a holy man being worshiped by a whole jurisdiction or region of people belonging to different tribes and groups. I remember the first time when I was a child and a follower kneeled into prostration in front of me and I got really confused and I asked my mother that you always told me that only God deserves to be worshiped in this way and only he should be kneeled upon, then why is he doing this to me? Does he think that I am God? My mother’s answer was that they think that we are God’s ambassadors on the planet and due to being born in a specific tribe we become high born and gain royal blood which puts us in a position of huge responsibility of taking care of our kingdom. This made absolutely no sense to me as I believed and was taught by my religion that all men are created equal and no white has precedence over black and no local has precedence over a foreigner. The original version of our religion taught us that people of all religions and cultures are supposed to be respected. The Christians and Jews can be our friends and they will not go to hell just because they are not Muslims; they will go to heaven and they will be judged just like we would and their respective Prophets will act as their ambassadors on the Day of Judgment. It is written in the Quran as well; God says that if it were up to me I would have created all humankind with same faith but I deliberately created this diversity as a test so that we learn how to respect and overcome our differences and honestly join together through our similarities to live in peace and harmony with each other. That’s why in our religion interfaith and interracial marriages are encouraged to promote this level of diversity. It would absolutely be self contradictory for a religion to state that other religions or races or colors or creeds should be isolated but at the same time be allowed as well. Unfortunately there are some factions in our religion that think otherwise even though there is quite an overwhelming level of evidence or proof to suggest the contrary. But again they are a few and majority still believes that it is just fine. However the rest of the world is bent on vilifying us for a religion that is vastly misunderstood not by the foreigners only but also by the Muslims themselves. People don’t understand when I tell them that when Quran has a verse saying "Kill all the outsiders who have wronged you" it was only applicable to the people 1400 years in the past when they were in the middle of a war for their survival from the Quraish tribe that was trying to kill them for their Islamic beliefs and not for all time up till the day of judgment. The verse as usual has been taken out of context and misinterpreted to defame a peaceful religion. Anyway my ultimate question to my mother was very simple; how can a man who doesn’t even know about his own future and can’t even predict about his own fate on the day of judgment would be able to save these people and offer them retribution or salvation? My mother could not satisfactorily answer this question because she knew that this whole phenomenon of "Holiness" was just a cultural travesty and had nothing to do with religion in the first place to begin with anyway. But due to this level of unawareness my mother was brainwashed into following a hypocritical system of retroactive conformity of a class system designed to subjugate the illiterate people and manipulating them into believing in something that was not the truth to create a culture of subservience towards the power and influence of the ruling classes which would keep them in their place and vulnerable to follow rules that would keep them functioning in the lower order so that the masters keep their agricultural lands and their production in accordance with government tyranny and corporate imperialism. Obviously my mother began to realize that as a woman her position might actually be quite secondary and at the end of the day her brothers will get majority of the benefits. That includes the inheritance of land as well which is also a cultural thing. My mother after conforming towards the hypocritical fundamentalism of her traditional family still got betrayed by her own father which then resulted in developing a high level of insecurity in her personality and behavior. Although she was educated but due to limited vacancy she didn’t get a job and now was stuck in raising a family which she didn’t want to. She wanted to belong in the social circle of her relatives and she tried her level best to impress them and be hospitable to their needs and follow the standards of traditional living but none of that was good enough for her super rich extended family who always put her down for absolutely no reason until she just lost her mind. In that frustration and irritation she took her fear and hate out on me in the most negative manner possible. In order to make matters worse she decided to find refuge in religion which further manipulated her inferiority complex and low self-esteem and used it as a weapon to make her think and do whatever the organization wanted her to think and do. Islamic guilt has a way of making you feel like a sinner 24 hours a day just like many other religions. They turn you into their puppets by making you go through a stage wise process of Kubler Ross and David Kessler Model of grief which is denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Majority of the traditional housewives that turn towards the asylum of religion are suffering from grief, but the major difference is that they are not transformed into zombie robots that are devoid of critical thinking and human emotion or are made to follow the laws and rules of suppression or submission or obedience or oppression. That put me in her sniper sights and she found me as a perfect suitable escape goat for her life’s problems and troubles and used me as a punching bag to take out her nihilism, pessimism, cynicism, skepticism and all her negativity. She became a rageaholic maniac determined to make my life a living hell because her husband treated her like a piece of garbage and religion blamed her for it. She was a classic case textbook manual orthodox run-of-the-mill example of a spoiled rich pampered girl suffering from biochemical instability and hormonal imbalance. A relationship is based on trust, respect, loyalty, justice, empathy, altruism, compassion and kindness and when your own mother doesn’t even fulfill one factor then you’re fate has obviously dealt you a tough hand. I became a victim of mental and physical abuse by my mother as well. The issue that really hurt me was her weakness in acknowledging the truth or fact of the situation and her inability to be loyal and just while being trustworthy and reliable. She was being unfair and didn’t even realize it. In order to make matters worse she started lying about everything in order to save her reputation. In order to save her reputation she would lie about me not only to my family members but also to my relatives negotiating her honor and dignity. This behavior made her lose her trust and respect but she was willing to surrender her ethics and morals. It is part of our righteous piety that we are not at liberty to divulge sensitive or private levels of information about our own family members to anybody including members of the extended family as well. My mother would say or do anything to her own family members in order to save her reputation which goes to show how much pride has led her astray and towards the depths of hypocrisy. She would gladly throw me to the wolves by blaming me for whatever problems or troubles happened to me in my life but also blame me for everything wrong that happened in the lives of my whole family including her if she is put in a tight spot which is absolutely irreversible and unacceptable. Let me give you an example on how much vindictive my mother could become. When I was a kid I used to have trouble breathing due to a diverging nose that had a middle bone that was so deformed that it blocked my left nostril and I wasn’t able to inhale proper amounts of air to get oxygen and it used to be a problem and on top of that my nose is very small in fact I probably have the smallest nostrils in the world which obviously wasn’t helping the problem as well but making it a little worse. I was having trouble sleeping and used to snore very loudly and then had an accumulation of nasal fluid that used to infect my sinuses while also causing things like sleep apnea. All of these situations resulted in my nostril tissues, nasal passages, airways, sinuses, throat, tonsils, esophagus, lungs and my whole respiratory system getting negatively infected. I was obviously diagnosed with DNS (Deviated Nasal Septum) and surgery was recommended immediately when the situation became more serious as my nose had grown to almost its full length as I was 16 years old. The treatment of surgery was only the most logical approach recommended by the doctor or specialist but my mother just refused to admit that I would actually be suffering from something genuine and she blamed me for being sensitive to my respiratory disease. I had to fight for my right of being taken seriously and treated as quickly as possible before something else happened but my whole family didn’t want to listen. Ultimately I had to use my father’s rank and had to go to the naval hospital myself alone to get my surgery done so I took the bicycle and admitted myself without telling my parents. After I woke up from the surgery I informed my father that I had gotten he surgery done and I am going to be returning after a few days. Upon returning home and still bleeding from my nose I was going into my bedroom and I saw my mother in the lounge totally offended and removed from the intensity or potency of the situation. Her words were absolutely one of the most painful and hurtful words I would ever hear in my whole lifetime. She said and I quote "You would always be a pain in my neck". I would never forget these words as they are one of the most heartless, thoughtless, uncompassionate, inconsiderate, unkind and selfish words a mother could ever tell her child after he has gone through so much pain already and in which he had no fault of his own and he never inconvenienced her in the slightest and did everything himself even then she could not say one word of support. What kind of a mother is she that just doesn’t give a damn? But who am I kidding right; she never gave a damn about me since the day I was born in the first place to begin with anyway. This incident was just to give you a small idea of what she could actually do if things were not going her way. My mother actually has a much worse habit of manipulating her family members into making them fight amongst themselves by portraying herself as the victim and then using the ignorance of the family member to turn against his own flesh and blood. This kind of devious activity would probably put even the devil to shame. Once she went to such an extent that she made all four members of my family including me fight amongst each other for a very trivial issue that had nothing to do with anything. My mother plays the innocent victim or the damsel in distress routine better than anybody I have ever known because that is the ultimate forte of the women in my region and it is known as deception. In order to formulate her lust and greed for power and influence and keep herself relevant inside the family she would say or do anything to keep the relationships among the family members unstable so that she can keep on reaping the benefits. My family members can’t process multiple relationships so they stick to their most favorite ones and this weakness is then exploited by my mother who plays on their insecurities and turns them against each other so that she can still remain important. She will indulge herself in this devious game and turn father against son and sister against brother and that’s how she will get her way with us. How do I influence her in a positive manner that our relationship could be improved?

Hello, this is going to be a long read with no tl;dr. I'm sorry, I just don't feel like condensing. I feel as the entire story needs to be read. So, I guess I should start with a condensed biography between both of us before I get to the story. For me, I'm a tormented lost soul. I was molested as a young child, I hid this demon inside for a very long time up until the point where I decided killing myself would be the best option. I attempted overdosing on oxycodone and hydrocodone. Clearly, I failed. Which I'm okay with right now. I've seen therapists, and I still feel so lost. Medication didn't help. I feel as I'm no good. I tried killing myself only a couple days before my birthday. I became numb, very apathetic and had zero capabilities of showing emotion up until I met my now ex-girlfriend. For her, she's just as tormented as I am. She was molested as well, she lost her sister to suicide, her moms a deadbeat who only wants money, her dad just died recently and she's sad she didn't pursue a connection between each other before he passed. Now for the reason I'm posting. My girlfriend and I were together for 5 years, on/off (mainly due to me because I'm shortsighted and dumb). In the beginning, things were good. We had a healthy relationship I would say, we had an intimate connection. Sexually and mentally, things were good for a good time. We were obviously still on/off, but we always had this connection between each other. I was still fighting my demon. She was there for when I tried killing myself. This last time we broke up, everything was different. Before we broke up, I turned dark and cold-hearted towards her primarily, but everyone else around me. I was controlling, abusive mentally and physically, mean. I suppressed my emotions and didn't try to actively heal on them.. instead I projected them onto the people around me.. but primarily her. I don't know how she stuck around for so long, I was so fucking mean I can't stand myself. I stopped calling her beautiful, but instead I called her ugly, even though she was the most gorgeous girl on this planet. I controlled who she hung out with, I never let her have fun or be with friends. I didn't show her the respect and love she deserved. I was physically abusive at times. I would grab her arm, or her stomach one time. But the main thing that set her over the edge was me chucking a wallet at her, which hit her in the face. I never punched her in her face or anything else.. although this doesn't change the damage I did. I had lost my sexual desire in general. We rarely had sex. I always made her cry. I stopped showing that I cared about her. Instead, I start projecting my monster towards her because I didn't know what else to do. This wasn't acceptable in any fashion. I regret everything, and would go back in time to change everything I did to her. She left me, which she had every single right to do so. She didn't deserve to endure my physically and mental abuse. It's so saddening to me that I only realized my damage.. after she left. I would change everything in this world if I could have changed prior to her leaving. My problem is I seek happiness in others, before myself. She left to better herself, to focus on herself. I don't hate her for anything she did. I hate myself, I hate everything about myself for what I did. I am no better than those who abused us as kids. I physically and mentally hurt her just like we were hurt. I projected my anger out on everything around me. I'm not lost because she's gone, I'm lost because I hurt someone enough to push them to their limit just to leave. I feel no better than those monsters out there. She won't text me back, which is going to be okay in the end I just can't accept everything. It happened so fast. This was a garbage Christmas, and it'll be a garbage start to a new year. Nothing can change what I did to her, she can forgive me but she will never forget. I'm just lost with myself now. I don't know what to do. I want to change, but it's so hard to change. I am broke.

uh hey i saw a post on tumblr which talked abt this website so here i am. i feel super suicidal atm. i almost killed myself last night and a huge breakdown and now all i wanna do is cry and delete all my accounts if that makes sense. sorry if this is too personal. um i live in an abusive home and get bullied at school (i know this sounds cliche lmao). on top of that ive got ptsd and am a csa + cocsa survivor. i dont have any irl friends and only talk to 2 people online. lately ive been doing worse and worse. sometimes i cut myself, i tend to do it more these days. i promised one of my online friends to tell him every time i selfharm but the last two times i couldnt bring myself to do it. hes concerned but i cant talk 2 anyone rn. i feel dysphoric too (im a transboy) im sorry this got so long i guess i needed some place to vent. anyway i want to fucking D ie i hate myself im an asshole

So I have ptsd and bpd, this may help better understand this situtation. But I feel suicidal and have thoughts to self harm and have already self harmed . I don't know what to do anymore. I feel so alone and dead and useless and I think I should just not exist. I keep thinking of all the abuse I went through, keep having nightmares, every sound sends me into a panic attack and causes me to cry. All that I have been pushing down keeps coming back up and I don't know what to do anymore. I am about to just give up. I have been trying to fight through this so fucking long and I dont know what to do. I feel like my family always wants me to be perfecct knowing my illnesses. I have expressed to them that this really makes living hard for me an they just keep saying to get through it but dont care to fucking listen in therapy sessions about my serious illnesses. I always feel like I am screaming and no one wil listen. I am begging for someone to listen to me because I am in so much fucking pain from this lifelong abuse I have had. I don't know how to handle this anymore. I just want to give up.

It's horrible how parents are stupid and often also "blind" and don't recognise what's happening... http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-may-13-2016-1.3580576/sibling-bullying-has-the-greatest-impact-says-parenting-expert-1.3580656 Website of the author: http://www.kidsareworthit.com Interviews with 3 listeners who commented on that program and then were willing to share their stories: http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-may-31-2016-1.3608620/the-not-so-safe-sanctuary-of-home-1.3608628 Available as podcasts, too: http://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcasts/current-affairs-information/the-current/

Is there such a definition? I'm starting to think it was happened to me, a handful of years ago when I was about 12y/o. The other person had authority over me and was 35y/o. There was no direct touching. But I still hate what he did. Again there was no touching, no violence, lot's of absolute fear, Could this be sexual abuse?

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