“Information is not knowledge. The only source of knowledge is experience. You need experience to gain wisdom.” Albert Einstein
Each week on Tuesday we will answer an anonymous message received at BitsnB1218@gmail.com or through DM.
Dear Bits n’ B,
“I have a very complicated relationship with my family. This post is directed at my dad’s side, but I have a rapist on both sides of the family. About three years ago I was kicked out of my dad and stepmom’s house because they found my battery for marijuana cartridges. They were constantly looking for excuses to get me out of the house and threatened to send me to my mom’s house anytime I did anything they deemed as not obeying them (they are very controlling narcissists) For context, my entire childhood my dad manipulated me into believing my mom was a horrible person and a terrible parent to the point that I hated her. My mom and her siblings were raped by their father when they were children, and I grew up believing that made her a bad person because that’s what my dad told me. She didn’t even get the chance to tell me herself until about a year ago, he just openly talked about it to paint her in a negative light. I was very young when he told me these things. I think I grew up kind of believing that rape happened because of something the victim did, because of the way my dad described it with my mom. I never thought it would happen to me. In 2020 I was raped by my stepbrother. (This is about two years before I was kicked out) My parents found out we had sex and called me a whore and a slut and never asked me for my side of the story, they just assumed it was consensual. Once they kicked me out the decided I was a terrible, selfish, careless, loveless human being that was doomed to fail and never succeed. My self-esteem has been horrible and I have their voices in my head every single day saying I will never be enough. I have been no contact with them for about two years. However they still have a great relationship with my stepbrother. I think what I want to get from this post is, how do I live with this reality? I know there are so many other people who go through this and it’s never going to be easier said than done. I need advice about how to be okay with yourself without that parental approval or reassurance. I look for reassurance in other people constantly. I was in a three-year relationship that ended recently because I became very angry and refused to deal with any of this stuff and I took it out on my partner. I’ve also been struggling with that because she was the first person that showed me what love should look like and I ruined it. I try not to shame myself because I know i’ve been through a lot, i’m not just poison I have control over my actions and that’s my main focus right now is trying to heal and learn from my mistakes, but my dad’s voice in constantly reminding me that all I will ever be is nothing. That I am a horrible person. This got kind of off track, my mind is just on fire constantly. any advice helps. no one is truly alone.
Dear Angel TeddyStfu,
Thank you so much for trusting us to come along side and offer support.
Your father is no different than most people who look at tragedy and minimize it. It’s easier for them that way. Reading your words it seems he has a long pattern of doing this and blaming victims for the crimes that were perpetrated against them. The generational trauma your mother experienced he expressed to you as a reason to mark her as a broken person. Don’t let him do this. When you stop believing the story he is telling you and wake up to your own reality, it will help you get rid of the weeds he’s planted in your life. The weeds he left in you are that when a person has been sexually violated, they are, a “horrible person,” “bad parent,” “bad person,” “slut,” “whore,” – “a terrible, selfish, careless, loveless human being that was doomed to fail and never succeed.”
You have got to start pulling up those weeds, so they will begin to die.
Start asking yourself different questions – like, “If my father threw my mother under the bus for being sexually assaulted as a child, why would he treat me any differently?”
“Why would my father stand against his sexually abusive stepson if he’s never taken the side of a victim before.”
This is how you will begin to live “with this reality.” Change the reality to the truth of things. Measure them with an accurate measurement, not the devices your father has given you.
As for hearing your dad’s voice in your head while you are doing all that you can do to heal…you must learn to recognize, confront and disidentify from the inevitable inner critic voices that will throw you back in time to the awful feelings of overwhelming fear, self-hate, hopelessness and self-disgust — all part and parcel of your original childhood abandonment.
As a child, in extremely rejecting families, you eventually come to believe that even normal needs, preferences, feelings and boundaries are dangerous imperfections – justifiable reasons for punishment and/or abandonment.
You have to remember you will most likely never win parental approval nor change the dynamic or pattern that lead you to these feelings of self defeat today.
The progress of critic-shrinking is often infinitesimally slow and indiscernible at first and requires lifelong management to keep at bay.
I encourage you to challenge your father’s voices (and all inner critic voices) with all the ferocity you can muster. Try to find a part of yourself that is mad about how grossly unfair your parents’ bullying and indifference was. Is there any part of you that is outraged that you were indoctrinated and inculcated into self-abandonment and self-bullying when you were too young to protest or even know what was happening to you?
Gradually, you can build your ability to say “No!” and “Shut up!” whenever you catch the critic, the proxy of your dad, attacking you.
Try this: Write out a list of your positive qualities and accomplishments to recite when you find yourself lost and drowning in self-hate. You must match the hate speech with an equal or stronger force of positivity and self-compassion and embrace and process the grief as it arises.
With ongoing practice you will begin to notice the spontaneous self-compassion that can come to arise in its place when the inner critic is not allowed to spoil it.
All love!
The Pedophile Huntress 