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njlauren -> RE: Handling abuse in a relationship (9/3/2013 8:03:21 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: crazyml
Hey njlauren,
I can't imagine how it must have felt, seeing someone you love suffer so. And while it's actually none of my fucking place to say pass any judgement on the way you handled it - it does seem that you handled it with love, compassion and common sense.
But I can't completely agree with the entirety of your post as I just don't think it is as simple as that.
Yes, of course, if someone is struggling to function in life as a result of past abuse then they should be encouraged to seek help - Whether this is by going directly to a therapist, or by connecting them with a survivors group.
And if someone I loved were on a path to self-destruction, or to harm to themselves or others as a result of past experiences (whatever they may be) then yes... I might take it a step further and make them seek therapy.
I'd, hesitantly, say that if someone is struggling to function in live as a result of their addiction to kink, you might want to suggest similar action.
In practice the advice to "get her to a therapist who is a specialist on trauma" just isn't as simple. To begin with, unless someone is willing go voluntarily there's relatively little point in forcing them into a therapist's office, unless it's to prevent an immediate risk of harm.
I am not at all sure that I agree with this;
quote:
For the OP, I would be extremely surprised if she didn't need help, and at the very least, if she is the one in a million that came out being okay, it would relieve your mind, knowing.
There are many (too many) survivors of abuse. And many of them haven't needed therapy. Some do, some don't but I think your "one in a million" estimate is way out.
That is not to suggest that those who come through these awful experiences without the need for therapy are any "stronger" or "better", it's just that they may very well have processed and worked it through in their own way. I for one wouldn't seek to impose my ideas about the most appropriate way to handle such a personal set of experiences on someone else.
I wouldn't impose anything on anyone, and I also know how hard it can be to get people to treatment. Yes, there are a lot of survivors of abuse out there and many of them have worked out ways of dealing with what happened, but the other thing to keep in mind is that someone who otherwise appears to be functioning may not be functioning in all things well. My spouse to everyone around would be shocked if you told them she was abused, but then again, they were not in a relationship with her or saw her reactions when things went wrong in sex.....there are people who are perfectly functioning in most of their life, who do other things that aren't healthy for them or the people around them (like the abuse survivors who turn hypersexual)......people handle things in their own ways and form, but having experience with other partners of abuse and having met more than a few survivors of abuse, I will tell you that when it is horrible abuse, especially suffered as a child, it always eventually seems to come out, and often not in healthy ways. I can't say whether the OP's sub is unhealthy in what she does or not, and there is no way for me to say so even if I was a trained professional (which I am not), over the net. My real point is that someone partnered with someone who has been abused who thinks there may be issues cannot do it themselves, that using BD/SM or anything else to help them isn't going to work, either, and that if they believe their partner is not healthy, if they feel there is something wrong, then they either have to walk away if they feel like the stuff they think is unhealthy is going to hurt them both, or try and convince the person to see someone...which obviously could fail. When I said they should get them to someone who is an expert, I meant that they should try and convince the person, forcing someone to go to therapy wouldn't work even if they could force them, because the person would have their back up and refuse to work with the therapist...as they say, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.
Yep, some people are very resilient and move on and seem to be well adjusted, and any quirks from the abuse could be channeled into relatively harmless things, but there are also a lot of people who are walking timebombs, too, or who already unknown to most are doing things that are going to implode on them, which is always my concern. I met my spouse when she was 19 (when the abuse had only ended maybe a year or so before we met), she had blacked it out, and no one saw anything with her that made them think there was an issue..and I never put together things I saw that hurt us as a couple,sexually or otherwise, I assumed it was other forces at work, until a collision course with a mess not related to the abuse itself forced us into therapy, and looking back, I realized how crippled it made our relationship and my sweetie..but if you asked me for 13 years if I thought she had been abused, I would have said no..... I also am wary when people tell me 'most people recover okay', it is a little like people telling me that when that happens, someone dusts themself off and picks them up by their own bootstraps, it is very easy to say that, and point to people who were abused who did well, but they also don't see the pain, either. RA Dickey, the pitcher, talks about the abuse he suffered and what it did to him as an adult in his bio, it is worth reading in his memoir, and just based on my experience, I think a lot of survivors of abuse out there, both ones who have come out and ones that don't, have a lot more issues then people are aware of....and they can explode at any time. It is also why if someone suspects something, they can't try and handle it themselves, it is just too complicated, even therapy can't guarantee success.
When I said the OP's s was one in a million, i was not citing that as fact, I was trying to get across that someone who experienced severe abuse, especially as a child, is way more likely to have issues stemming from it and things coming out sideways, then not, and I did a lot of reading up on abuse, from survivors, their partners and practitioners, and they all pretty much agreed on that idea. I can't force anyone to do anything, all I can do is talk about my experience and encourage folks who have had trauma, or are with someone who they think is having issues from it, try try and get them to someone who can determine fact from reality, or rather, help the person figure that out.
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