Posted by wittgensteinz on June 27, 2009, at 14:45:37
In reply to Victim/Survivor terminology**possible sa trigger, posted by antigua3 on June 27, 2009, at 10:00:33
Antigua,
I think those words bother you because they carry so much meaning. To be a victim is to have undergone something - you have to be, to some extent, at ease with the fact that the abuse happened, that it happened to you and that going through it is something 'big' and 'changing' (damaging and permanent). If someone is in denial about the abuse (either that it even happened or to the extent it affected them), then I think hearing the word 'victim' is going to be very confronting. It's putting you into a place over which you have conflicted feelings. Perhaps it makes you feel guilty that someone calls you this - e.g. "was it so bad that I am a 'victim'?"
You can't see yourself as innocent of responsibility - so you also can't accept yourself as a victim or as a survivor. But perhaps your pdoc wants you to see that he, as a witness to what you went through, regards you as an innocent survivor - if he can see that, then maybe it will help you realise and accept that too in time.
I don't imagine the problem you describe of measuring how bad your abuse was is unusual. For you, growing up, it would have been a normalised situation. Abuse was a normal part of the fabric of your young life. How can you contextualise something that was passed as normal - something you had no choice about - maybe the lack of an internal barometer is in itself a survival mechanism you developed to get through it.
Did you share your reaction with your pdoc? The fact you have a reaction to those words is important. It means you're feeling something - it's not the case that those words mean nothing at all to you, that you close yourself off completely from them.
Witti
poster:wittgensteinz
thread:903453
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20090614/msgs/903483.html