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.
Reading Berserk gave me some new perspectives on violence. Or really it just gave my existing perspectives some nice graphics to look at. In the series, the protagonist experiences horrific things from the moment he’s born, and he loses what little hope he found several times. He sets on a life quest of extreme violence to get vengeance, but quickly realizes that all it does is makes him feel empty and depressed and alone. But he later finds kindness and love in new friends and family and repurposed his violence to preserve that.
We all should seek peace and kindness in our life. But that doesn’t mean we must accept evil being inflicted on us or others. And sometimes the only way to preserve or create that peace and kindness is through violence. Don’t get intoxicated by violence and don’t make it your purpose in life, but if you find yourself in such a situation, then the person threatening that harmony must be disabled or put down like a rabid animal if necessary.
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Alternatively, consider abuse and self defense as a microcosm of war time conditions. During war, we cannot prioritize re-educating the enemy. They will either be imprisoned or shot. Once you are in peace time, and the threat is far away from you, then you can consider forgiveness and re-education and reintegration.
Shockingly good lesson from manga; maybe I actually do need to properly read Berserk.
They are far away, but the threat that they'll be back soon always seems near. Maybe it's just CPTSD though
If you were a slave, and I were your master, and the only way for you to be free were to strike your blow to kill me, what would you do?
That does help start my imagination where I imagine being a slave starting my escape. Doesn't matter if you feel compassion for the slave owner. The option to end slavery is as simple as that.
I understand applying this logic for other people, but I do not understand it well for me. I was told it's because I do not give myself the compassion I give to others. That's the effect of me being in victimized positions before. Perhaps I should listen to more Kwame.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
this might be terrible advice. Maybe since you have PTSD you are dealing with your body going into freeze mode when threatened, but you really need to get more fight mode. Practicing hitting for real and sparring will definitely help condition you to automatically respond when threatened, i have experienced this when i've been forced to self defend. It is automatic now.
I think just build up to making it feel safe to spar and feel angry. I feel like when i was stuck in feeling frozen from PTSD, i wouldn't even let myself feel anger because it was too dangerous for me, so maybe you're in the same place? Yeesh i'm terrible at this.
If you can't imagine hurting them over self-defense, maybe try imagining hurting them over some imagined defense of others. When sparring, as long as you've got safety equipment on, you're good to go. it's great practice for learning. If it's too real to think of it as real self defense, just think of it as a fun game like fencing to get yourself into it, that lets your body learn how to move and gets your brain time to warm up to the idea of actually hurting another person.
You could try reading some black panther's theory about self defense and seeing if any sticks with you into why it's good actually to be ready to hit back. I'm kicking myself because i don't remember exactly the title i'm thinking of, but Black Against Empire is great, or maybe it was Against Civility.
There's also a citations needed about nonviolence somewhere, i'm sure it's in the podcasts directory or here's the transcript.Anyway, here's "In defense of self defense" by comrade Huey Newton
"the oppressor has no rights that the oppressed is bound to respect. Kill the slavemaster, destroy him utterly, move against him with implacable fortitude. Break his oppressive power by any means necessary."
i don't remember exactly the title i'm thinking of, but Black Against Empire is great, or maybe it was Against Civility.
Reading the summaries, it could be either. Lemme know if you find out.
I feel like when i was stuck in feeling frozen from PTSD, i wouldn't even let myself feel anger because it was too dangerous for me, so maybe you're in the same place? Yeesh i'm terrible at this.
No you're not terrible at this. You have reasonable thoughts from experience. Anger does feel dangerous for me. I've only thrown real hits in the middle of being high on hate.
If you can't imagine hurting them over self-defense, maybe try imagining hurting them over some imagined defense of others.
Its hard to picture. I haven't been in situations where they're hurting anyone else in front of me. Just me and myself getting harmed.
Find something that allows you to feel hate. Become acquainted with it just like a person you are trying to befriend. Learn to gaze into the waters of rage and see the contours that form the Eddys of hate.
I would personally advise against this. I have found it very helpful to approach violence impersonally, as a tool, rather than as something pleasurable to indulge in. I find hate and anger lead people in to fights they can't win or that won't lead them to victory. I fight my friends for fun, for the joy of battle. When I'm fighting enemies I just want to neutralize them as efficiently as possible and move on towards victory.
I hadn't really thought about this, but I think part of it came from being bullied. I don't recall regarding my bullies as people that I wanted to hurt, just obstacles to be removed using overwhelming, terrifying violence, once. Hatred would mean acknowledging them as a person worth having feelings about. When you truly dehumanize someone they stop being worthy of hate, and are just an object to be manipulated to achieve your desired ends.
Yeah, sounds about right. I've never been able to grok the "martial arts is about defense" or "martial arts is about self development". Martial arts is about rendering your enemies unable to fight efficiently.
I find hate and anger lead people in to fights they can't win or that won't lead them to victory.
Right. If I'm in a hate contest, the other party could easily win. Theirs is natural to them, and my hate is a spurt of energy that ends. I posted because I realize having endless compassion is unsustainable.
At the same time, hate is the only thing that got me to do real punches... But I do go back to giving them compassion again whenever I stop hating them.
Hating is energy intensive if you pair it with appeasing, which I've done. Rapidly switching between fantasies born of hate and fantasies born of fearful appeasing is intense. If I need to learn hate, I need to also find a way to take a calm break.
Just my opinion, but it worked for me until I quit for unrelated reasons.
what were the reasons?
A variety of life changes including quitting my job going back to school for a bit. Some combo of maturing happened, or just aging changing up :electrochemistry:
So, it seems you just cannot retaliate for yourself. Might be easier to view this that they’ve not only harmed you, and will definitely harm others if they’re not already doing so. And that giving them what they want will not fix them as it obviously did not while you were with them.
Ideally, eventually realizing even if you don’t care about yourself being treated that way, you are still a human, and you’re still worth defending is kinda important. I used to be the same. But you cannot play middleman forever, and doing so rarely is useful at all. While sure maybe you think you can handle it, there are much better uses of yourself than helping pieces of shit who don’t even deserve it. It may help to find something actually worth your time, and realize people using you will get in the way of you doing your best towards that thing. That sometimes doing things for yourself is okay, as feeling better means you can put more into something else. You can’t just let yourself fall apart. Especially not for pieces of shit. You’re worth much more than that.
I saw Renfield (2023) the other night, which deals with abuse and overcoming it by depicting Dracula and Renfield's Master/Familiar relationship as one of toxic dependency and abuse.
Despite Nic Cage's hamminess it capture the emotions and events that abuse involves really well, treating them very seriously despite the comedy around them. It also gets extremely violent with abusers (and cops, and the mob), with ludicrous amounts of blood spraying all over every fight scene.
The biggest downside of the film is that one of the major characters is a cop, but it is only one good cop among a bad bunch.
I can't honestly say it will help you with processing your abuse, but it depicts taking revenge on an abuser and isn't too heavy, so it might be a place to start.
I find it disgusting you're wasting time watching movies while we're out here building socialism.
EDIT: Sarcastic reference to something you said
As far as meting out revenge against people. True revenge does not come through satisfying a primal desire for retribution and vengeance—something that, no matter how much you pursue it, you will never achieve—but rather by imposing yourself in your enemy’s eyes and making them fear you after they used to despise you.
Hating is the only thing that's taken me out of paralysis and led me hitting for real. Instead of with crooked wrists. It would start my progress to what you're saying, but hate also seems unsustainable for me because I experience it as an intense burst of energy that feels scary for me. So aside from hate, I need an alternate fuel for training.
True revenge does not come through satisfying a primal desire for retribution and vengeance
That's true for me. At best, imaginary vengeance could only be deemed as good enough for my present goals. In reality, I could never do my desire. Which is to make things to have never had happened in the first place. But no one can give that to me. So I just fantasize throwing my trauma out my head and into theirs for them to keep and suffer from. That's impossible too. I think my best outlet is using hate to fuel training for self defense and a safe form of self expression.
I think trying to shame people for wanting to drop a piano on somebody is extemely annoying and I see it happen constantly, it makes me want to drop a piano on people. I think you should be able to drop a church organ on people but yeah you get me, conserve your energy.
If it helps I am quoting a modern Axis of Resistance guy, and I really think there is wisdom in what he's saying despite the emote. It's more about the hand gesture Conover is making in it. ☝️
There's already a great deal of violence, direct & indirect used to enforce "democracy" in this country & other Western democracies.
I don't think there should be any artificially imposed boundaries placed on struggle legal or otherwise that aren't practical & tit for tat in nature. You can't will your opponents into being nonviolent so that's something you're just going to have to prepare for all across the world against the right wing wherever there isn't a government that can impede it, if it isn't abetting it.
