What's coming up is a repost from my personal Facebook page/Instagram that I threw up there a couple months ago. I wrote it after reflecting heavily on a particularly difficult time in my personal life that completely threw me off course, redefined my worldview, and shook my sense of self to the core. People I trusted with my creative output and considered friends pulled the rug from under me and it's taken awhile for me to process what's happened. What really gave me courage to post these thoughts was being able to confide my side of the story to a couple friends who already knew the outline of the events in question. To have my experience heard by some genuinely kind individuals with open ears gave me what I feared I didn't deserve: compassion and understanding... because months upon months of gaslighting will make you believe you never deserve to feel understood, let alone happy and safe. This post goes into no details about the actual events I experienced because at the time I was still in touch with a couple of the folks involved, but rather out of respect and a hope to encourage other people who've experienced similar circumstances, talks about my general experience of emotional abuse and gaslighting in a few scenarios throughout my life. I am posting these thoughts again here on the blog because this subject is very much in line with what I intend to cover in future posts anyway, and gives some personal context to whatever musings I will post here about abuse/gaslighting/manipulation, etc. I only ever intend what I offer about my personal experiences to be helpful. Talking about these things can sometimes be interpreted as looking for attention or wallowing in a victim mentality, but the truth is the truth and there is no point staying silent about narcissistic abuse and emotional manipulation. The only way we can recognize these situations and put a stop to them is knowing what they look like. That is all. Now, to the post: Over the last few months, one topic has dominated my thoughts and I wanted to talk about it just briefly because I know this is not unique to me: (just to be clear, this is not at all going to be a political rant.)
If you have ever had to deal with the fallout of harassment and mental or emotional manipulation from significant individuals in your life, you know that it affects every aspect of your walking around life. When you have been gas-lighted, manipulated, and made to feel unsafe by someone else on a consistent basis, it is hard to feel that anything will ever be okay again. It can be hard to enjoy life, think calmly, and feel normal when you're always ready for the same shite to happen again with other people you trust. In my late teens and early twenties so far, I have encountered several cases of personal and vocational harassment/gas-lighting in previous friendships and former work places. I've had to leave jobs, been forced out of friend groups, and have had huge setbacks in my mental health because of gas-lighting, manipulation, and harassment from people I thought were safe for me. And the more this happens, the easier it is to start to believe that you deserve such treatment, especially if there is never anyone there to advocate for you on your behalf. Experiencing such things on your own feels like drowning, yet I have always felt on some level that such treatment from other people was somehow warranted. And thinking you deserve it is really all just part of the head-f***ery the toxic relationship is putting you through. Because no one deserves that. No one deserves for their head and heart to be misused by another person, for their trust to be broken and to be unable to assess what's real in the relationship because the other person is capitalizing on your confusion and fear. And if you've ever experienced these things for yourself, I am so sorry, and I see you, and I believe what you've gone through. Our society tends to normalize toxicity and harassment in all arenas from the personal to the professional, and it makes it exhausting to stick up for yourself, especially if you harbor fear that no one will listen, care, or believe you. But as scary as it is, setting up boundaries to stop the toxic behavior and then telling the necessary people who can hep you about it is key in making sure it never happens again to you or to someone else. Asking for help and asserting yourself is frightening, but being trapped in manipulative situations is so much worse. I will be working through what I've experienced for a very long time and I certainly do not quite know what to do with the things I've gone through. It is not easy for me to put things in the past and leave them there, especially when I initially had hope for the relationship/connection that turned out to be inherently broken and toxic. But at the very least, I have gained a lot of empowerment from learning how to leave situations that were incredibly unhealthy, even though if I'd had my druthers, I would have never chosen to go through those things. Ultimately, though, I hope these things have shown me how to be a better friend, family member, and (someday) partner to other people. I hope I know more about how to love since I've experienced a lot of pain. But that's not to say that you necessarily have to learn anything from stuff like this... but I hope I have. Thank you for reading.
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