Anonymous wrote:Living well and being happy is the best revenge.

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Anonymous wrote:This person is not worth the energy you are putting into your anger.

And that anger is giving this person a prime spot, THE prime spot, in your mental real estate, OP. In essence this person is, to put it crudely, "winning" against you, even after the abuse is long over, by taking up so much of your emotional and mental time and energy.

For those reasons, this stranger is begging you to get back into therapy, or, if you're still in therapy, to tell your therapist more fully exactly what you told us here. Maybe change therapists if you have one but for some reason aren't being this frank with the therapist as you are anonymously here. We can advise all day, and you'll get posts asking you for more and more details here "so we can help you better" etc. (often these come from people who just get kicks out of all the gory details--don't feed those beasts). But you need to see a professional to evict this person from your mind. Your life is being impaired and that gives this person power over you. I won't say, "Just stop giving this person power over you" becuase it is so hard to do that on one's own. See a new therapist, or tell your current one your whole, raw, angry truth, or restart therapy if you've stopped it, but you need help to take back your life and thoughts. You deserve to have your true self back and that cannot happen with just venting to strangers online. Please, please get help.

You don't get it. My therapist knows I feel this way. Have you ever been through this? If not, you don't get it.

And yes, I'm aware that this person is winning, that they have won. That's the whole point. No matter what I do I can never get back what they took.

Also, I'm not sharing any details here, I'm not stupid.

I am not in the same boat but my therapy has only amplified my bitter feelings. I think we could both be helped by seeking healing in another outlet.

DP. You said upthread that you have learned that you must express feelings to be able to move past them but many people have the experience that expressing negative feelings increases them and is not the solution.

The way to let negative feelings go is to let them go, not to focus on them and give them more power through expression.

You are not responding to a post by the OP but I am tending to lean into what you are saying. The problem is too much baggage. It's like how hard it is to cut family off when you still have tons of ties that bind in other ways. Can you let go of bad feelings for an abusive teacher if you still see them in the hallway every school day? People often side against a victim because the victim is so upset, never mind they didn't ask for any of it in the first place. The guy that rocks the boat is annoying but the person who rocks the boat back is looked down on even more.

The issue is that when you have strong negative feelings and share them, and the response is "you need to let them go," if the person cannot let them go (which is common if you're talking about trauma), then instead what you are really saying is "bottle those feelings up and don't take about them anymore." Which is toxic AF.

There are very limited spaces in the world where you can say stuff like this. In therapy, maaaaaaybe with very close friends and family (but even that is dicy because most peopel are just not able to hold emotions like this and it will freak them out to see someone they love express this stuff, it's just really rare to have a support network that can handle this unless you are paying them), and then on an anonymous site like this. Maybe a support group IF you can find one, they are actually hard to find.

Which is why "you need to let it go" is just such useless advice. How? When you have been harmed like this, you can try to think about other things, you can exercise, meditate, whatever. At some point you are going to wind up thinking about what happened and you're going to feel how you feel.

Just where exactly is it that you folks think all these negative feelings go?

It is totally useless advice. Next comes the lecture about why do you see yourself as a victim? Well, because you were victimized. The only productive approach is to stop inviting people to take advantage of you. You were genuinely victimized. Victim has become a dirty shameful word and it’s all about not enforcing accountability for perpetrators.

Yes, you were victimized. No, it is not your entire identity years later.

And yes, before you bother, I have experienced SEVERE trauma in my life.

But the perception that someone has made victimhood their whole identity is an incorrect one. There might be situations when this would apply but you'd need to interact with this person regularly over time to see that they think of themself this way and interpret every aspect of their lives through this lens.

On here, you are reading a person's thoughts about their experience relating to being victimized, and only that. It's the topic of the thread. It should not be necessary for a person to put their entire identity in context in order to convince you that this is not their entire identity but just one thing that they struggle with.

I am a rape and sexual assault survivor. I also experienced childhood abuse and neglect. Those things had a serious impact on me and continue to impact me. However, if you asked me what my identity is, I'd talk about being a mother, about my work and one serious longterm hobby I have, about my spiritual beliefs and ethical priorities. I probably would not even mention my identity as a survivor unless it was a context in which that was obviously relevant. Sure, it is something that comes to mind often when I encounter triggers, but it's not my entire identity by a long shot.

This would be like if someone came on here and wrote at length about struggling to get over the death of a loved one, how painful and difficult that was and how even years later they still struggled with it, and multiple posters replied "you're not that special" and "let it go" and "stop making this your whole identity." It's this myopic belief that just because all you know about a person is the worst thing they deal with, that means that's all there is to them and it's the only think they ever talk about or think about.

People are complex.

Anonymous wrote:The notion that people who endure pain and suffering at the hands of others are the ones with the problem if they can't or won't just let it all go is totally wrong and awful. If someone hurts you it is normal to want to hurt them back, and you should if you can. They deserve it.

Anonymous wrote:If society actually held people accountable for abuse, we wouldn’t have this problem of “oh no what if the victims of abuse get big mad and actually treat abusers the way they’ve been treated! The horror!”

Literally the #metoo movement was just people who had been abused standing up and saying it out loud and asking that their abusers be removed from positions of authority where they could continue to do it to other people, and it took like 29 minutes before people were like “whoa whoa whoa, this is going too far— do you want to RUIN these people’s lives? The made one mistake and it wasn’t even that bad.”

Sigh.

Anonymous wrote:The notion that people who endure pain and suffering at the hands of others are the ones with the problem if they can't or won't just let it all go is totally wrong and awful. If someone hurts you it is normal to want to hurt them back, and you should if you can. They deserve it.

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Anonymous wrote:This has got to be one of the most tedious threads ever.

Yeah, I kinda agree.

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Anonymous wrote:OP, I really think your therapy has not served you well. You are trapped in validating your feelings and haven’t moved forward to working on only having thoughts/feelings that serve you.

I just saw this TikTok and it was a great example of using therapy and mind work to actually move forward to thoughts and feelings that serve you instead of remaining trapped in the thoughts and feelings that are harming you. I hope it helps.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRvSGXuF/

Only having thoughts and feelings that “serve you?”

Sounds unhealthy and restrictive. We don’t want to be at the mercy of our thoughts, sure.

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Anonymous wrote:OP, I really think your therapy has not served you well. You are trapped in validating your feelings and haven’t moved forward to working on only having thoughts/feelings that serve you.

I just saw this TikTok and it was a great example of using therapy and mind work to actually move forward to thoughts and feelings that serve you instead of remaining trapped in the thoughts and feelings that are harming you. I hope it helps.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRvSGXuF/

"Therapy hasn't served you well, please watch this TikTok video instead."

Ummmmmmm.....

Anonymous wrote:OP, I really think your therapy has not served you well. You are trapped in validating your feelings and haven’t moved forward to working on only having thoughts/feelings that serve you.

I just saw this TikTok and it was a great example of using therapy and mind work to actually move forward to thoughts and feelings that serve you instead of remaining trapped in the thoughts and feelings that are harming you. I hope it helps.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRvSGXuF/

Anonymous wrote:OP, I really think your therapy has not served you well. You are trapped in validating your feelings and haven’t moved forward to working on only having thoughts/feelings that serve you.

I just saw this TikTok and it was a great example of using therapy and mind work to actually move forward to thoughts and feelings that serve you instead of remaining trapped in the thoughts and feelings that are harming you. I hope it helps.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRvSGXuF/

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Anonymous wrote:OP, would you like some petty revenge ideas? Normally I'd say to take the high road, but this person sounds pretty evil and you've certainly tried to get over it in more mature ways.

I'm serious.

Well now you have to share. Everyone needs some petty revenge ideas.