RE: https://mastodon.social/@ChrisJagged/116346728020760075
Not only that, but historically, abuse culture will promote assholes to top scholar positions who will then write the history books. Just as we all were raised, in the future everyone will be tricked into singing their praises.
Unless we do something to change this dynamic.
@futurebird Might Makes Right is the core principle of authoritarianism. For those who have succeeded through life by intimidating, manipulating, and coercing others, this is their tested method of getting their way, so they feel justified in taking this position because they think it will always work to make them top dog in their little world adjacent to their ideological allies.
But even towards their ends, from a completely selfish standpoint, this worldview holds a fatal flaw.
If you allow that you can take from others by force and manipulation, then you allow that you can be taken from by the same means. Maybe you *think* no one can take from you, but nowhere in any place in history or nature, has any one strategy been completely undefeatable.
There is always a way around any fortress wall. There is always some weakness in the greatest military. Even the best liars can be out-lied. This is the fundamental flaw of an abuse mindset. You have set up the rules such that you are fair game, and someone WILL take what you have eventually. No matter how much you bluster, you can never sleep easy, because deep down you know this.
The only sure strategy for winning safety and success is an even playing field, where the rules apply the same to protect all, where all interests of all people are shared, where all succeed or fail together.
Christianity primed white people to feel guilty when certain Pavlovian bells ring.
Accused? Wrongdoing even subtly implied? Guilt! Shame!
Then, if it's a respected authority doing the implying (be it parent or priest), we're primed to submit.
If we don't respect the authority of the "accuser," well, were primed to see them as the enemy in the all-or-nothing good vs evil war. "My authorities haven't called that a sin so who is this person anyway??" And we lash out. At women, POC, queers, disabled, and often, even ourselves.
What, you're white but never were Christian? Sorry, but you were programmed this way, too. (If you feel mad at me, that's the programming.)
Christianity's way out from guilt and shame is impossible. It doesn't work. It's designed to make you feel forever ashamed and in debt to Jesus β or rather, the religious authorities who represent him. That's how they get you.
We aren't allowed to emotionally mature to know how to handle our own feelings when we've done wrong. We're forever dependent children on the religion. We go to confession, do the penitence, feel a few days of relief, then go back to feeling guilty. No matter how well-meaning any particular clergy, this is by design.
Now suddenly here's these people I don't respect out of unexamined implicit bias dumping more crap on me.
Aren't I bad enough? Haven't I submitted enough? What am I supposed to do about it?
I'm hamstringed. My white brain has been lobotomized wrt how to handle this. But also, I've been told by trusted authorities that I'm not a racist, so I'm not!!! Out comes the Karen.
Colonialism=Christianity=Corporatism
It's all the same system.
Freeing ourselves from this system means freeing those whose oppression we enable.
Because it's all the same thing.
#AbuseCulture #ReligiousTrauma #exmo #exmormon #exvie #exvangelical #antiracism #antifa
A LOT of the times that people treated me like I was crazy was when I resisted oppression they had normalised. They saw me "making a fuss" about "nothing" and punished me with everything from judgemental looks to death threats. Often, I couldn't articulate why I was acting out. No one would have listened anyway.
But looking back, it's just so clear that in this society, and in my family, having instinctual reactions against things that feel off, that feel oppressive or that violate boundaries, was considered crazy and was punished.
A characteristic of abuse that I want to see more emphasised is the abuser's feeling of being entitled to dish out consequences (punishment) to others.
I say this because sometimes lists of red flags or abuser characteristics or descriptions of abusive personality traits either leave it out or throw it in as a side sentence, easily overlooked.
But that's where the line of abuse is!
Being triggered by someone wearing a green shirt? Not abusive!
Yelling at someone for wearing a green shirt? Overstepping and can be part of a pattern of abuse!
Believing that God put you on earth to teach heathens the gospel of bruschetta brunch? Not abusive!
Taking people's phones away until they learn and recite your favourite bruschetta recipe? Abusive!
Or, for a less absurd example:
Being triggered when your child doesn't obey because you have trauma around that and your nervous system turns on the alarm sirens? Not abusive!
Making your child feel guilty for not obeying or for triggering you? Abusive!
π§΅
#abuse #AbuseCulture #RedFags #entitlement #MentalHealth #MentaIlness
Trauma therapy that doesn't actively fight economic injustice and poverty and its causes, sucks and is useless and ends up doing more harm in the form of subtle victim blaming and reinforcing toxic (capitalist) messages.
Poverty causes dissociation. If you're poor, you have to constantly endure discomfort and unpleasant physical and sensory input.
You have to sit on chairs that hurt your butt and back. You have to sleep on cheap foam mattresses that do the same. Your walls are thin and you hear your neighbours and have to walk on eggshells to avoid getting in trouble. You have to eat and drink the cheap stuff that just doesn't taste as good and doesn't satisfy your true needs. Your clothes are ill fitting, give you gender dysphoria and you probably don't even have a sense of what a pleasant texture would be for you because you could never make that a factor. Household chores are all on hard mode because you don't have the fancy appliances that could help. You probably have to cope with disabilities that go unaddressed and unaccomodated. If you have work, it's probably of the back breaking kind. You're much more likely to breathe polluted air and drink polluted water.
I could go on. The point being, these things are all obvious and anyone who knows anything about trauma, dissociation and grounding can understand how they'd make people dissociate. They cause a background level of dissociation that is hard to overcome as long as the causes are still in place - and arguably not desirable to overcome.
But that same dissociation also makes any other therapeutic intervention or healing approach that much less effective.
Poverty is violence. Poverty is trauma. Poverty is injustice. Healing trauma means fighting the injustice and indignity of poverty. β
I should add:
6. You're allowed to distrust anyone, for any reason, and you don't have to justify it. Even people you're close to.
If someone says "You don't trust me!" as an accusation, the best thing you can do is say, "Yeah, I don't trust you, not in this. If you want me to trust you, you'll have to earn it."
Lack of trust is not YOUR moral failing. If anyone has failed morally, it's the person you don't trust... maybe they really do deserve your trust, but don't ever just give it over if your instincts tell you otherwise... even if your instincts turn out to be wrong.
If they really are trustworthy (and not just trying to manipulate you), and if the relationship is worth it to them, they will meet you where you are.
And if they can't or won't? That's ok too. Not everybody has to like you.
These thoughts are inspired by this guy on an old season of Project Runway, who started off giving red flags because he was badmouthing the other contestants. But he grew over the course of the show.
And I still don't like him.
He defied his initial red flags and is not an abuser at his core. He's learned some humility, empathy, and is going on to be a better person. Probably even a good person.
But I still don't like him.
And I don't have to like him.
He's got other people who do like him.
A few lessons I learned from age and hard experience:
1. You are allowed to be offended.
2. You don't have to like everybody.
3. Not everybody has to like you.
4. Just because you dislike someone doesn't mean they're a bad person.
5. Just because someone doesn't like you doesn't mean you're a bad person.
I lost too much of myself from having been conditioned otherwise. The opposite of these beliefs once had me upholding and enabling #AbuseCulture. I let myself be abused and let others be abused by contorting myself to impossible contradictions. They came with shame that falls away every time I learn some new aspect of these lessons.
Predators think they're demonstrating their power when they prey on the vulnerable: little girls, neurodivergents, the disabled, the poor, generations of conditioned Christian women.
That doesn't seem very tough! Any of us could lord over a defenseless child if we were pathetic enough to want to!
If they were really powerful, they'd take on military sergeants, CEOs, drug lords. Go out there and groom a Catholic Cardinal into giving you head and then I'll be impressed. Try to pull that on any ranking member of MS13! See if you can bully Putin or Bill Gates onto your island and prove you're a REAL man!
Wait, you don't have your island yet?? Why not, you broken little action figure? Haven't gotten yours from Musk yet because he's too busy trying to dominate the weakest possible beings to take your calls?? Maybe he should check your house!
What a bunch of licked soggy cupcakes.
Mx. Luna Corbden πΈ
Aurin (ki, ki, kis)