TW: suicide
Don't want to hurt abusers, but I do want to be able to hurt them and choose not to. I think it'd help me if I gained the ability to imagine physical vengeance. I want this to end in forgiveness.
It's long been unsustainable for me to be a martyr. I waste my life away in maladaptive daydreaming where I imagine helping my past abusers. I've attempted suicide over the grief of past events, which gave me CPTSD and OCD.
I've had multiple physical abusers, and can barely imagine hurting them. I need to build the ability to imagine attacking. I think if I can imagine hurting my attackers and physically punishing them, including just for my own vindictive fun, then maybe I can gain the ability to actually forgive them.
Currently, I imagine giving them what they want, and then magically figuring out a compromise with them where they change their minds and stop being an abuser. (Like dating someone who sees me as a piece of meat, and using the relationship to change their mind so they're not a shithead anymore.) I think that's not actual forgiveness, it's just bending to their will. I cycle through these maladaptive daydreams of self-sacrificing for the benefit of the inhumane, and waste my life in suicidal grief. I'm skipping something crucial...
...I realize cannot truly forgive without making a choice to not hurt them. I think I need to first imagine brutal vengeance. Not to act it out, but as a step to expressing myself differently before I attempt forgiveness.
A friend has also been trying to train me in MMA, but I won't hit for real. I won't spar with them even though I know its good for me. I just imagine stopping danger through compromises that don't actually exist.
One session I hit a bag for real. I was down to punch after someone had attempted to assault me days earlier. Being vindictive seriously helps, and imagining torturing and annihilating the predator was a huge help.
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idk if this is even remotely comparable or helpful, but back in the day I did a lot of larping and we found that many women are heavily, heavily conditioned not to throw a punch (or, in this case swing a sword) under any circumstances. Made it very hard for them to learn to fight. So a big part of onboarding women, among others, was helping them break through this cultural indoctrination that they couldn't hit people. We had hte advantage of using foam bats, and the general thing was "This thing is built so safe that you literally cannot harm me with it as long as you're hitting me in the torso and not the head. Just keep smacking me until you don't have to think about it." Like in our case we were trying to break down this idea that physical aggression was both impossible and, idk, like, a lot of women (among others) had this internalized idea that any physical aggression, sometimes any physical exertion, was "wrong", like a societal expectation that women must be passive and shit, but extremely internalized.
So a lot of it was like "look you physically can do this, and we're going to help put you in a safe, controlled environment where you can practice until it starts to feel natural."
And, honestly, a lot of people, once they started to break down and discard that conditioning, they loved it. Fun fact; Many women, once they throw off the burden of societal programming, turn out to be barely controllable berserkers who need to be politely reminded not to try to actually kill their sparring partners.
So I guess my advice would be to try to find a context that feels safer, and practice until it feels safe, until it doesn't feel like an internal contradiction with your self image. Like, idea, get a rattan stick or a shinai and practice clean, controlled strikes on a soft target like a bag or a sand bag or something. Just do it over and over again, like you're chopping wood or cleaning a rug, and focus on being mindful of the motion, on control and follow through and hte mechanics of twisting your hips and dropping your arms to put power in to the swing, be mindful of that and try to remain present and away from the past. All much easier said than done, but that's the best I've got based on my experience.
I guess another part of it was creating a positive, supporting environment where the idea that everyone could be a warrior, and that was cool and good and supported and respectable, that probably helped too. Like people were in this place where all these weirdos wearing armor or painted green or whatever were being positive and supportive, and it created this space outside society where, for once, you didn't have to do what society expected because society was out there and we were in here making our own world. Idk where to go for that kind of departure from the "real" world though. Well, actually, maybe if there's a LARP group like Amtgard or Hearthlight in your area you could look them up, see if there's anything that clicks. You're gonna find people int hat environment, people who have endured abuse, who can relate to your situation and have gone through similar things. A lot of people end up in combat larps specifically because they're trying to work out how they feel about past abusive situations. That said, if it doesn't feel right bail, there's plenty of shitheads in LARP groups and not every group is chill.
I'm considering larping. Do you have any suggestions for getting over the dumb themes of feudalism that'll probably be involved? I'm worried I'll want to roll my eyes at that.
It'll be easier if participants already know feudalism is stupid. Like the more positive Warhammer fans who find the fascism in Warhammer hilarious. I'm guessing self awareness varies from person to person.
I think the SCA does more feudalism, but the fantasy boffer larps are all pure high fantasy. I don't distinctly recall anyone droning about economics, and most of the people I played with were portraying goblins, minotaurs, very generic holywood vikings, elves, and a bunch of other silly shit, and were more in to drinking and singing than worrying about feudal property relations.