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Beaten into Submission?

Ellen Brown

Well-Known Member
Those who are beaten into submission and have grievous injuries inflicted upon them have many choices. One of them is to choose to live until someday they will be big enough to stop their abusers perhaps. Another choice is to choose not to ever inflict such pain on another. Sadly there is a mechanism within us that strives to make us just like the one who hurt us. What is this? Can it be defeated? Can this wound be healed from?

Can the defenses that are erected to survive such pain become themselves harmful? Can Dissociative Fugue hurt one? Are there uses for it when the abuse stops?

How can we stop things that feel the same or similar to what happened in the past?

How does God operate to help one to survive the experiences and to later not allow that pain to rule or ruin our lives? How does one filter out the Psychobabble? How does one stop the Theological babblings of those who will never understand.

One of the most difficult things required of the wounded is to forgive those who wound us. That is where something unexplainable must happen. Perhaps that is the most succinct proof off all of the existence of an Intelligence outside of us? Perhaps those who can not see that are the most sad of all?
 

osgart

Nothing my eye, Something for sure
There is no just and good reason that abusers go free in the world.

What test is this that a righteous person must endure abuse?

The only answer is to get free of it.

Forgiveness wont often change the abuser!

I respect non violent lawful civil defense in such cases.

The abuser needs their just punishment, thats how i forgive that.

I would not advise eye for an eye, nor turning the other cheek.
 

Skwim

Veteran Member
We are all being abused, and we are all abusers. Until we understand this, there is no redemption.

BOY O BOY, ONE MORE RULE.
AT THIS RATE WE'LL NEVER GET INTO HEAVEN
article-0-0BF0492A00000578-717_468x359.jpg

Please stop us before we abuse again.
PLEASE . . . . . . . . .

.
 
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dybmh

דניאל יוסף בן מאיר הירש
In a lot of ways; I think a person's soul behaves like a sponge.

If a person is full of hostility, dominance, and self-importance there is little room for compassion, restraint, and humility.

Conversely

If a person is full of compassion, restraint, and humility there is little room left for hostility, dominance, and self-importance.

When a person is abused, it's like their soul is being wrung out. Energy is violently ripped and stolen from the abused person, and the soul has many holes and is very thirsty like a sponge that has been squeezed repeatedly without mercy.

After it has been abused a person's soul naturally absorbs the negative energy of its circumstances. In the presence of hostility, dominance, and abuse, a person's soul naturally absorbs this negative energy like a sponge absorbs water. Often, this negative energy remains so that the next time the abused person is under stress, the negative energy rises to the surface like water in a sponge that is being squeezed. And this explains the cycle of hostility that you are describing.

There is very little an abused person can do in the moment to shield themselves from this mechanism. Abuse is without mercy, violent, and dominates. After the fact, I think the best thing a person can do, is to spend time with others who have had similar experiences. Try to release the negativity in small doses, then replace it with positive experiences. Immediately following an abusive event, I think it's good to avoid stressful experiences and give oneself permission to be hostile and unpleasant at times. It's natural to be hostile and unpleasant for a person who has been abused. It's natural, but I don't think it's permanent.
 
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Ellen Brown

Well-Known Member
In a lot of ways; I think a person's soul behaves like a sponge.

If a person is full of hostility, dominance, and self-importance there is little room for compassion, restraint, and humility.

Conversely

If a person is full of compassion, restraint, and humility there is little room left for hostility, dominance, and self-importance.

When a person is abused, it's like their soul is being wrung out. Energy is violently ripped and stolen from the abused person, and the soul has many holes and is very thirsty like a sponge that has been squeezed repeated without mercy,

After it has been abused a person's soul naturally absorbs the negative energy of its circumstances. In the presence of hostility, dominance, and abuse, a person's soul naturally absorbs this negative energy like a sponge absorbs water. Often, this negative energy remains so that the next time the abused person is under stress, the negative energy rises to the surface like water in a sponge that is being squeezed. And this explains the cycle of hostility that you are describing.

There is very little an abused person can do in the moment to shield themselves from this mechanism. Abuse is without mercy, violent, and dominates. After the fact, I think the best thing a person can do, is to spend time with others who have had similar experiences. Try to release the negativity in small doses, then replace it with positive experiences. Immediately following an abusive event, I think it's good to avoid stressful experiences and give oneself permission to be hostile and unpleasant at times. It's natural to be hostile and unpleasant for a person who has been abused. It's natural, but I don't think it's permanent.

OR, one can be given the opposite path as a mercy to them? I have known those with deep, unimaginable wounding to be peaceful and loving, yet understandably unwilling or unable to speak of the experiences. Is this dangerously pent up anger, or simply a rejection of past experiences? I do not know.
 

dybmh

דניאל יוסף בן מאיר הירש
OR, one can be given the opposite path as a mercy to them? I have known those with deep, unimaginable wounding to be peaceful and loving, yet understandably unwilling or unable to speak of the experiences. Is this dangerously pent up anger, or simply a rejection of past experiences? I do not know.
I think those people are a role model of restraint. I think they are very special people.
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
One of the most difficult things required of the wounded is to forgive those who wound us.

Forgiveness does not mean allowing abuse to continue or taking action to stop the abuse. It's a way of responding to the abuse that does not "bind" the abused to the abuser spiritually.
 

Ellen Brown

Well-Known Member
Forgiveness does not mean allowing abuse to continue or taking action to stop the abuse. It's a way of responding to the abuse that does not "bind" the abused to the abuser spiritually.

When I feel anger with the past, I know that I am not depending on God. One of the gifts of God came through the Mormons and it was to no longer hate my abuser, but to forgive him by the direct admonishment of Jesus. It was something I failed at for almost 40 years. By a mechanism that I do not understand, my forgiveness came when I was Baptized by them. Why not in 5 other Baptisms? Perhaps one of my first questions when I come to Judgment?

There is one scripture that anchors me and perhaps explains things in the past that I can not understand. Isaiah 56:4-5
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
Those who are beaten into submission and have grievous injuries inflicted upon them have many choices. One of them is to choose to live until someday they will be big enough to stop their abusers perhaps. Another choice is to choose not to ever inflict such pain on another. Sadly there is a mechanism within us that strives to make us just like the one who hurt us. What is this? Can it be defeated? Can this wound be healed from?

Can the defenses that are erected to survive such pain become themselves harmful? Can Dissociative Fugue hurt one? Are there uses for it when the abuse stops?

How can we stop things that feel the same or similar to what happened in the past?

How does God operate to help one to survive the experiences and to later not allow that pain to rule or ruin our lives? How does one filter out the Psychobabble? How does one stop the Theological babblings of those who will never understand.

One of the most difficult things required of the wounded is to forgive those who wound us. That is where something unexplainable must happen. Perhaps that is the most succinct proof off all of the existence of an Intelligence outside of us? Perhaps those who can not see that are the most sad of all?
I was a badly abused child, nearly killed by my step-father twice before I was 7. I spent years in special care to try and get over it, and then more years in boarding school (where I didn't have to live with family, since it was clear I could never accept that situation).

It took a long time, but I'm happy to say that I am good now...I have no bitterness, no grudges, and sometime in my thirties I realized I had forgiven it all. And that freed me, I know it now.

One thing has always been clear to me...it is a darned good thing that I turned out gay. I will always suspect that had I ever had to cope with the pressures of bringing up children, I could so easily have been an abuser myself. Fortunately, that's a hurdle I never had to leap.
 

dingdao

The eternal Tao cannot be told - Tao Te Ching
Forgiveness is a misdirection. Forgiving your abuser gives them permission to continue abusing. This is especially true if the abused is in your charge. I agree that hatred will poison your other relationships. It is just something that needs to be worked through, peer counseling, normal therapy, whatever.
Dissociative Identity Disorder, Multiple Personality Disorder, Shattered people will be in therapy the rest of their lives. A useful model for this therapy Cast of Characters. The problem cases are the ones where the character are not talking to each other.
God seems unconcerned.
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
Forgiveness is a misdirection. Forgiving your abuser gives them permission to continue abusing. This is especially true if the abused is in your charge.
Oh, I really must disagree. Forgiveness isn't even operative while the abuse is ongoing...all the focus has to be on defense. But when the abuse has ended, especially when the abusers are rendered powerless to continue the abuse, then forgiveness frees the abused person, while granting nothing of value to the abuser. It is a perhaps necessary selfishness.
I agree that hatred will poison your other relationships. It is just something that needs to be worked through, peer counseling, normal therapy, whatever.
If hatred will poison your other relationships, why then you have to let hatred go, or resign yourself to live in a world of poisoned relationships! Why would anyone wish to do that? Whatever one may have suffered in the past, isn't living in a world of love and acceptance the reward that finally gives peace?
Dissociative Identity Disorder, Multiple Personality Disorder, Shattered people will be in therapy the rest of their lives. A useful model for this therapy Cast of Characters. The problem cases are the ones where the character are not talking to each other.
And once again I disagree. I think too much of what is called "therapy" these days focuses on how "they were wrong" and "you're not to blame." In my case, it was realizing that "they were just as trapped as I was," so that I could forgive them. The only person I really had to talk to was me. Once you know that an abuser is, far too often, acting out the abuse that he himself suffered, then you can stop the blame game.
God seems unconcerned.
And here we certainly agree...
 

dingdao

The eternal Tao cannot be told - Tao Te Ching
Oh, I really must disagree. Forgiveness isn't even operative while the abuse is ongoing...all the focus has to be on defense. But when the abuse has ended, especially when the abusers are rendered powerless to continue the abuse, then forgiveness frees the abused person, while granting nothing of value to the abuser. It is a perhaps necessary selfishness.

If hatred will poison your other relationships, why then you have to let hatred go, or resign yourself to live in a world of poisoned relationships! Why would anyone wish to do that? Whatever one may have suffered in the past, isn't living in a world of love and acceptance the reward that finally gives peace?

And once again I disagree. I think too much of what is called "therapy" these days focuses on how "they were wrong" and "you're not to blame." In my case, it was realizing that "they were just as trapped as I was," so that I could forgive them. The only person I really had to talk to was me. Once you know that an abuser is, far too often, acting out the abuse that he himself suffered, then you can stop the blame game.

And here we certainly agree...
I've hit your buttons.
Current therapy usually lets the abused talk about the issues. Yea, the abused will blame everyone, but they need to get past that point, too.
If you've got the self-discipline to consistently talk it out (without looking like you really need help), then go for it.
 
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