Right. There’s a higher truth at stake here. Blame itself isn’t the way. Finding out the root of your trauma is personal, never about someone else. Yourself is whats included. Therefore I can’t agree with Thysta. To go beyond the ego that most are trapped in is for all of that to lose significance. Not to live in self pity because you think you’re a victim of childhood abuse. Know what I mean? That does nothing, infact it’s nothing but a stressor.
For me the two are not necessarily linked. Imagine if someone runs a red light and hits me and then drives away, and my car is destroyed. The fact that my car is destroyed is the other person's fault, but I am the one who has to take responsibility for my car and do what needs to be done for the repair. For most people, acknowledging the responsibility of the other person doesn't mean they will do nothing about their own car or that they will not move on.
btw i have done that. to my own mother. i blamed her for everything she did to me while my childhood. but it didnt do anything to my symptoms. and i also dont know what to do with the knowledge of my childhood“traumas“. i remember a lot bad shit you know. a lot of horrible stuff. but again. what to do with them?
It's the same for me. I have spent years in therapy and have identified many abusive things mostly from my mother, and a lot of the time (but not always) the help it gave me seemed minimal. I don't know the answer. Maybe the culture of psychoanalysis is a little responsible for that, where we have learned that by just naming a trauma we should be rid of its consequences. Even some therapists seem to believe this and it's not necessarily the case. Just a thought, but maybe sometimes it can work when we identify the cause of one of our beliefs. For example I think I am bad at something in life, and looking at my past, I realize that I think that way because my mother told me things about it, and told me I would never be good at this, or that she hated my way of doing this or that. Then if I realize all my belief comes from this kind of interaction with her, I can realize this belief is not based on anything logical and it might be a false belief after all. And then maybe in my daily life, when that belief will come up to tell me I suck at this, I might remember that this belief is just a "memory" of what my mother used to tell me, for example, and is not based in reality, and then I would naturally modify it.
In this case, psychoanalysis would not be so different from CBT, where CBT only cares about the last step, and not really where the beliefs come from, they just change them "by force".
Not to live in self pity because you think you’re a victim of childhood abuse. Know what I mean? That does nothing, infact it’s nothing but a stressor.
Actually, thinking about the self pity thing, I think looking at past traumas can be used to sort responsibilities, find what has been caused by another, and to the contrary what is my responsibility in all of that. For me, self pity actually happens when I don't understand what is happening to me and what the causes are and what I can do about it, and I resort to thinking "why always me??" As if it was all caused by an unfair force in the universe that always targets me and it's not my fault. And then the self pity itself seems to be what is dragging me down and I might start to hate myself for it, and try to represss it all because it feels like it is self pity itself which is dragging me down. One way to avoid self pity, then, is to take all the blame on myself. And if I do that, then it feels like I am the one in control and I have my life together, but then I might hate myself and fight with myself. This is just a possibility I am imagining based on how i have seen different people in my family function.
But understanding trauma can precisely help to see that it is not all caused by magical forces in the universe that target me in an unfair way, it is caused by past things that can be understood and sorted out. I can sort out what is my stuff and my responsibility and what is other people's responsbility and not unconsciously put the blame on myself for things I haven't done. I can have anger about it at first like it is normal to be angry at first at the guy who ran the red light.
Personal annecdote ahead: I'm just describing here the problem my mother had. One example among many is when I was about 14, I went to a concert with her, and there was a misunderstanding with one guy, a very stupid thing, I looked at him to see if he wanted to past me in the crowed, but he thought I looked at him because I hated him. It escalated and all his friends were starting to join and were starting to hit me, stronger and stronger. I told my mother I wanted to leave, she noticed and we left. But every time I spoke about this incident later, I had some resentment, which I think is perfectly healthy to some level because that guy was just being an ass and really put me in danger. But my mother always seemed to confuse that with self-pity, and kept telling me I should not look people in the eyes, as if I should take the blame for what happened. And she was not saying this in a calm helpful way, she was clearly triggered by my resentment and was scolding me. And I know her past, she had very abusive parents, and she really hates self pity. And for her, every resentment I could express counted as self pity. As an adult, I don't need her understanding, I should know what happened and deal with it myself in my mind. But as a child you need support, it is just normal to support your child and support them in their emotions and validate them, because this is how they learn to do it themselves. But my mother has always had that problema and she was never supportive about anything, she always acted as if it should be my fault and I should never blame others for anything (ironically she was always blaming others for everything herself, that's where her narcissisim comes into play). And as you said, we learn these things from others, and I have lacked the teaching about how to deal with my own emotions in a supportive way, and I feel I keep learning this by myself now. So it's not about just pointing the finger at my mother, but also finding out what is my responsibility today. I do have resentment about her and it is going away slowly as I am moving on, but in my case it would be a mistake to just throw the baby with the bath water because I see I have resentment and think this is going to be self pity and repress it all. Which I think is what my mother has done for all her life. Resentment can be ok, and if I validate it and get comfortable with it without repressing it I can sort out what is my mother's buisness to deal with and what is my buisness today. But the fear of self pity is what caused by mother to reject the whole situation just because there was some resentment in it.
No, you need to wake up. Are you even considering the possibility of people with DP who haven’t had that experience, or should we all just start to think our parents have created all our problems? You’re literally preaching one specific thing to a group of people because it aligns with causations in YOUR life. Trying to tell me I’ve been abused because I disagreed with your sweeping generalization of DP sufferers is called trolling.
Yes, that's what I was talking about with narcissistic traits. Confusing our subjective experience with an absolute truth, and neglecting other people's subjectivity. Tres was doing that to another level, for example. But I have been there too and I am not out of it... I remember when I disocvered I had some psychological diagnosis, years ago, I started to diagnose many people in my life with it, and I really felt like I was the carrier of the good news. Part of it was genuine happiness that I wanted to share with others and I wanted to do something helpful for them, but the other part was that I couldn't just go better on my own, I wanted others to acknowledge the power of what I had discovered and I wanted to be the one who helps them and get the credit and the praise.
