A different Mean for the Cycle

[SpiritTornApart]

I've been focusing so much on breaking the cycle meaning stopping my abuse of others because of the abuse I sustained. I've been thinking lately, can't breaking the cycle also include the emotions of hate, fear, ignorance, and pain? Not just for me, but for others I know are suffering.

That is one important thing I think about with my desire to apologize. To try and have the chance if she would allow it, to help her understand how my abuse has affected me and my life, so that she may be freed of the pain and emotions that's I've had to deal with. I want to expose the hard ways my abuse has affected me so people can see that not everyone who has abused another are just perverted predatory monsters that are out to hurt people and must be separated from society, but people who have been hurt badly and were never able to receive support and help.

There will always be reason for us to stay on guard to try and prevent such things from happening, as there will be those who may just be embodying the evil that people think about when they think of an abuser. That goes true with most things though.

This forum has helped me to reinforce the humanity in me, and to keep pushing for the hard decisions to fight and try breaking the cycle. It's still very scary talking about my story. My PO has recently given me permission to go to a single branch of Library in my county. I am struggling with thoughts of talking to them to see if I can setup an "event" where I can share my story. It's just very terrifying going up against stigma like this. I don't want to undervalue the support of this board, but I do wish I had someone by my side that I can draw strength from. I must be careful and on guard about such thoughts, because in the past they would have me try connecting with anyone I could, even in unhealthy ways.

This time it's not just anyone that I want by my side though, there is one person that stands above all others if she would choose to stand by my side and be my strength. I just don't see a path to that happening.

I'd be interested in hearing if any others have made attempts like this at breaking the cycle of stigma, hate, and prejudice.

[johnram]

I agree with you and admire your courage to try and change the cycles and to be understood more, but i feel with many people here being victims it is more complicated to relate or to even try, hence i assume the lack of replies

As someone who has been abused, i have enough challenge dealing with my own recovery that although i can appreciate the abuser has a story, it does not help me, and it does not make it right or excusable

I find it very hard replying to you, maybe someone else can be more empathic

[SpiritTornApart]

I appreciate your courage in replying to me I know it must not be easy, not just for you but anyone who sees my posts. The types of changes I proposed are very difficult and I myself even struggle with them. It feels like a task that seems pretty much impossible at times. To be honest, I do not think I'm strong enough or the right person for tasks like this. I'm struggling too much with what I went through and how it's affected me in my past in life, not just that but the burdens of seeing those I care about hurt and knowing that it all came from what I went through, for someone like me who has so much heart, it creates so much anger and hatred. Hatred for myself because I let my abuser do it to me, because I never reached out sooner for help, and I never saw the warning signs that are now so very clear to me.

As much as I try to preach about forgiveness in sympathy for those who have abused us, seeing things clearly now and understanding how it's affected me and how it's hurt the ones I love, only fills me with more rage against the person who abused me. I don't know what his reasons were, I don't know what his background was, all I know was he hurt me and I don't know why.

I'm sure many of us, like me, we'll probably never get those sort of questions answered. Even if they were answered, it would never justify what he put me and in the end those I care about through.

And as I've come to understand this more and more, it's made it more difficult for me to reach out to my victim and her family, out of fear that their a fear and pain will prevent them from seeing anything other than a monster.

[earthhorse]

SpiritTornApart,

I know it's hard now for you facing the consequences of what you did. And I in no way saying that I 100% agree with the criminal justice system and am quite cynical that it can offer survivors justice. But I hear you constantly positioning yourself as a victim, misusing terms like restorative justice, and I don't think that is acceptable.

The letter of apology you wrote was clearly about you, not the survivor needs, but your needs. Writing such a letter I found might be useful for you to understand yourself, but it did not center the survivor.

What is very triggering for me, and why I have not been able to reply to you further - besides it is also being a drag to repeat what I say - is reading how you see the survivor of some kind of savior for you. This is classic abusive narcissistic behavior.

It's like you can't reconcile the fact that you are adult and the person you hurt was a child! You are not the child, the dependent, or the vulnerable one here.

The survivor(s) of your abuse owe you nothing. And as far as what if anything you can give them, they will seek it out if and when they are ready. The best thing you can do is 150% respect their boundaries and the boundaries the law and society requires of you as a result of your sexual assault of a minor. Simple step one, do not intrude on their right to privacy and need of them and their family to distance themselves from you.


I want you to know most offenders see themselves as victims. But ending the cycle means owning your OWN actions.

You didn't abuse because you were abused. Many of us who were abused, even in the most complete and terrible ways, never harm children. Your abuse history and how you hurt someone else's life irreparably are separate in this way. Yes you deserve every support to heal from CSA. But no you do not get a pass to hurt children because you were abused. Not even the survivor of your abuse can give you that. It doesn't even make it understandable SpiritTornApart. What happened was selfish in the extreme - even if it arose from impulse/dissociation - you were not in a coercive context or acting on orders. The way you constantly position and center yourself as a victim, tells me volumes of the narcissism that allowed you to abuse in the first place.

The consequences you are now facing because of getting caught, have nothing to do with the survivor. It might not all be just. But it's your crucible now. It is wrought by your own actions. Own them.

Not for show/proof of your own 'goodness', because that's the point you were not, and are not a safe and a good person - it's a well debunked myth that dissociation can cause you to act against your own moral code, like is too often misrepresented in popular culture. The only context I can ever think of this occurring is when torture and mind control have been used - and it is elaborate and lengthy task to break someone in that way - risky too because it is so destructive and if not maintained by 'groomers' the primary identity will seek to break the controls. What you describe happening does not fit this seldomly occuring profile. Something in you gave you permission to take without regard for the consequences for the child you hurt. It is work for your future to become a good and safe person capable of being responsible for their actions. And if not for others, then for the child within you who always needed an adult they could trust and respect.

[SpiritTornApart]

Thank you for your honesty. I'm sorry that you've been triggered by what I've been writing.

I'm not even going to try and defend myself, for I don't know what to say. I'm sorry that anyone has had to go through abuse.

Perhaps it would be best for me to leave this forum so I don't accidently offend or trigger anyone else. You're right, this is my burden to bare. I don't want any sympathy, as I don't feel worthy of any maybe the abuse I have sustained and how it affected my life isn't important because of what I've done. I don't know, I just want to help those I hurt and I can't.

I take back none of the encouragement that I have tried to give anyone here.

[earthhorse]

No one said you don't have a right to heal form abuse. This has always been repeated and affirmed to you. You have every right and you deserve every support for this.

What is being said is that being abused as a child does not constitute a reason or an excuse to abuse children.

Now, though I understand what i said or other members are trying to tell you may be confronting and very painful. Yet you have now again turned the tables, by again casting yourself as a victim. So that even owning what you are doing makes you the 'victim' - your meaning - you will never get to heal from abuse as 'punishment'. This is pure passive aggression. No one sought to injure you or deny the child in you who was harmed. To the contrary people here , including myself really wanted to support you.

My abusers, were adults but in fact were big children who never wanted to own their actions, or take adult responsibility, they felt 'wronged' that they were in a responsible position. They would make me the child responsible not only for that they did to me, but also for their care. This is a very common dynamic in abusive family/care systems. It's toxic narcissism - not abuse as a child, but this false sense of entitlement, is what causes people to abuse children.

You can not make the survivor responsible for your redemption, care or criminal conviction. Not anything that happened in relation to your assault of them, before or since you abused this child, is their responsibility. They need to be kept safe from you, you need to stay away from them.

[johnram]

I have been getting frustrated reading the post here. i think you are being selfish, this is again all about you and your needs, in your context, i dont feel a sense of care for your victims. you are presenting as if you want to break the cycle and maybe you do, but you are going about it wrong i feel.

If you truly want to break the cycle, tell other people (not your victim) what you have done and why you have done it - tell wider society, so they can understand the cycles of abuse. Prove you have changed, by not contacting your victims and getting involved in work that supports rehabilitation.

If in the future your victim chooses to speak to you, so be it, but if you are sincere about this, it needs to be the victims choice, not yours.

Ultimately, i think you are in the wrong place here.

To me, anyway, you are a perpetrator (period).

[earthhorse]

Johnram,

I think though I really agree with your advice for clear boundaries, and owning what has been done, and was relieved to read your candid responses. However those last two sentence might be a bit harsh...

We all have many identities. One of of spirittornaprts identities is perpetrator, but he is also a survivor of CSA. He is probably a lot of other things too.

Being a perpetrator does mean there is a lot to work on. It is maybe like an addiction. But when acted upon bring about atrocity not just self injury.

(In fact arguably, I wonder if Spirittornapart would be so self reflective at all now, if he had not being caught... it would be easy to tell ones self that is was because he was a victim, and he couldn't 'help' himself, even as he is now doing - perhaps even excusing himself to slip again, then developing this narrative about the survivors perceived consent/ complicity, their 'special' relationship, seeing the survivor as 'doing this to him'/ 'triggering him'. Using manipulation - probably centered on his "victimhood" and all the things that would happen to him, the "special firend"/ "the only one who truly knows and "cares" about he survivor", if the survivor told. Implying that survivor is a monster to protect themselves, only causing 'innocent, defenseless' him injury. -to assure their silence. As he doe sin his letter. We all know the pattern.).

There is no forgiving or forgetting that - but forgiveness is not necessary to heal. Many people do terrible irreparably damaging things, but somehow life continues. And nothing will really change until people who hurt others find a way not to, and to heal and connect with themselves. Those two things are very strongly linked. That process certainly has a place here on these forums and it is courageous to want to end the cycle.

It's no good staying in denial about one has done or blaming, or relying on the victim of that abuse to make it better. This is so selfish and destructive But also means one will never get a chance to really heal or end the cycle.

We need to be able to have made the worst kind of mistakes and move forward to become better people - many survivors make huge mistakes because of bad/false learning.

The problem here with STA is that he is focused still on the survivor as his redemption, he is trapped in the cycle of abuse, he continues to behave abusively and can't even see it - it's totally twisted and a classic pattern in abuse. No one in the past it seems has challenged his narcissism and sense of entitlement. Or the story he has been telling himself about what happened - using his own profound suffering as an excuse for inexcusable acts. I wish I would say this is hurting him more than the survivor, but I know that's simply not true. But he is also truly and seriously hurting himself too by holding onto this false narrative.

[johnram]

Thank you Earthhorse - i think we will agree to disagree, it is something i have struggled with, but i think it had to be said.

There is reason this post was not commented on for a little while. I also think its disgraceful that this post is labelled "NT" by the OP. If you are the perpetrator, i think all your posts need to be "ST" when discussing your history.

When we go back down the line of responsibility, we can excuse many people of their actions, i tend to keep it simple and not think of what happened to my abuser. that may not be right, but for me, as a victim, the perpetrator had a responsibility and had a choice, when they were older as i was young and inable. The cycle never makes me feel better for my hurt, it feels like a get out clause, and an easy way to blame.

[earthhorse]

Hi Johnram,

On the point that there is never any excuse to abuse a child we are in complete agreement. And also I think I feel now very strongly, in fact I know, that ones own abuse as a child is never the reason why people abuse. Of course these things are related and have to do with false learning. But it is not the reason, nor an excuse of any kind.

Stay strong as you are Johnram, thanks again for being so truthful and forthright.

All the very best,
EH