Breaking the cycle of abuse is a feat more difficult the more years pass behind you. This has been the dogma since entering my dirty thirties and discovering that life has this circuitous tendency to speed past you, only to circle back around and catch you when you least expect it. The knowledge and experiences that have fermented up until this point in my life have borne fruit to this realization.
A deeper level of understanding things will bring new discoveries along with it. Opening one door and merely peeking inside can reveal a whole new world of thought on a matter. Such is most certainly the case with the cycle of abuse. I am halfway through the first year of my thirties, and I’m still discovering new research findings relating to childhood abuse that I had never considered before.
I was immersed in this tainted world for most of my life. I know the inner workings of physical and emotional abuse. In a way, I have the upperhand when it comes to research on abuse. Scholarly research is still very important, of course, but I already know the interiors of this domestic hell all too well.
Without even researching the reasons, I innately understand why survivors are so silent about their abuse. But I was skeptical if the professionals truly knew the answer. These professional scholars most likely grew up in relatively normal households where they were loved and appreciated and raised to believe they could surmount any obstacles that stood in their paths. What could they possibly know about living a life so incredibly opposite of that?
I let this morbid curiosity get the best of me one day. I guided my fingers to the keyboard to Google what the professionals thought. Tbh I couldn’t help but shed a tear when I read the very first line highlighted from a legal article Google pulled up from its SEO. These professionals truly do understand us. The unbearable isolation between them and us has mended. The very first line that caught my eye was highlighted just so:
I don’t know exactly why this struck such a chord with me. It was just so specific a reason to survivors of abuse, that I felt gently reassured by their depth of understanding. This highlighted text is very specific to one of many reasons survivors remain silent about their abuse for so long.
The Reasons for Silence (in no specific order of importance):
Feeling guilty, ashamed, or embarrassed about their abuse
I would often feel deep disgust and hatred for the atrocious things my mother would do and say to her own children, and for her equally miserable displays in public towards other people. I was also quite resentful of my father for being the enabler, allowing her to go on as she did without any meaningful intervention to improve the dire situation. Disgust for their behavior turned to resentment, which turned to feelings of shame for sharing the same genetic makeup that created the likes of them. It was quite literally guilt by association. Imagine being related by blood to the sorts of people you despise the most in the world. It’s a rather shameful experience. So much so that I would much rather bury that dirty, miserable secret from the world than bear the thought that I could be grouped in with the likes of them myself.
It’s also quite embarrassing to have to explain to other “normal people” the hurtful, degrading things you’ve been called by your own family, or the demoralizing and dehumanizing ways you’ve been treated. To admit you were completely helpless in those situations is a humiliating blow to the self-esteem.
Feeling like nobody cares about their problems or feeling like nobody would believe them anyway
Trust is a very important thing when it comes to victors* of abuse. Abuse victors may be hesitant to divulge their dark secrets to strangers and acquaintances who they don’t know and trust very well. They might curtly answer a few probing questions to a stranger about their family and personal life before eagerly changing the subject. They might hint at a tainted relationship with family members but remain tight-lipped about the details. Their hostile upbringing severely compromised their general trust in other adult figures. Unless they’re very close with someone who is a friend, mentor, or family member who has proven their trustworthiness over the years, abuse survivors tend not to place complete faith in others.
*[I prefer the term “victor” over “victim” for survivors of abuse. It is both empowering and anti-defeatist compared to the latter. I will here on out replace the word “victim” with “victor” as a way to stand up to abusers and stand strong together as survivors of abuse].*
This retreat from trusting others may generalize to everyone the survivors meet. A self-fulfilling prophecy ensues: abuse survivors distrust others; they withdraw from others as a result of this distrust; and those they barricade out are reluctant to try again. This in turn affirms the abuse victims’ belief that nobody truly cares about them. The survivors retreat further and further until no open communication with others is possible. This lack of prosocial behavior with others exacerbates the problem, until the survivors truly feel no one is capable of understanding or even believing what they’ve experienced back at home.
A further issue is the fact that there are always victim narcissists and opportunists lurking in every corner of society, eagerly waiting to snatch a brief moment of attention for themselves. Their glib cries of purported abuse and mistreatment for their chance at five seconds in the spotlight overshadow the real survivors’ suffering. “The squeaky wheel gets the oil” while the true survivors suffer in silence.
The natural skeptics of the world will catch onto the bluff of these narcissistic actors. They’ll (rightfully) expose these fraudsters to the rest of the world. All it takes are a few of these liars exposed to the public to render every other proclamation of abuse or mistreatment thereafter “fake news.” Such is what happened with the Me Too movement and even the transgender acceptance movement.
Initially innocuous gestures for social change, these progressive movements became the breeding ground for spoiled opportunists and flagrant fakers to inundate everyone with their disingenuous, self-victimization spiels. One false alarm after another by these victim narcissists, and the masses eventually grow tired of it. They soon become desensitized to the movement altogether. They start to accuse the victim narcissists of faking it for attention and money, or for merely following a “trend”—a morbid concept that downplays the severity of the subject matter at hand. The victim narcissists prove them right until the entire movement is rendered futile because of it.
Survivors of abuse such as myself quietly observed others’ reactions to these progressive movements and responded in turn—with silence. So far, it’s panned out exactly as described: survivors now fear that others will accuse them of lying about their abuse “for the clout.”
Avoiding the traumatic memories from the dreaded past
There is no doubt that childhood trauma should be addressed to move on and live a healthier, happier life. But opening up about traumatic experiences forces the victors of abuse to relive those moments, however briefly. Depending on the severity of the abuse experienced, this can be too much for a victor to handle all at once. Hence why professional care is normally advised. Only then will the survivor be ready to open up about their adverse childhood experiences.
Not fully understanding or downplaying that what they went through was abuse
I suspected something was deeply troubling about the way my mother and father treated us since I was a child, but I didn’t get the validation and confirmation I needed until I went to college. Once I took a few psychology classes and learned the terminology, it became clearer and clearer to me that what I had experienced at home was in fact abuse and that my feelings of being mistreated were indeed validated by the literature.
It’s normal for survivors to downplay their mistreatment at the hands of their abusers because they were too young and inexperienced at the time to know any better. This “asymmetrical” information is beneficial only to the abusers, who can go as far as gaslighting the survivors and even manipulating them into believing “it wasn’t that bad at home.”
Survivors comparing themselves to others who had it far worse is another reason for downplaying their own experiences with abuse. Survivors in this situation may even feel guilty about complaining about their hardships at home knowing full well someone out there is suffering far worse. Someone always has it better than you and someone always worse, but that should never invalidate “lesser” forms of abuse compared to ones on the “higher” end of the abuse spectrum. Abuse is abuse, plain and simple. Unfortunately, gaslighted victors of abuse need to relearn this cognitive process. The first step to achieve this is to acknowledge their abusers’ manipulative mind games. Only when they realize the impact their abusers had on their ways of thinking can survivors cope with the truth.
The fear of “something worse” happening to them should they report the abuse..
There are plenty of people who wonder why abuse survivors never report their abuse to the authorities. Why don’t they ever call the right services, contact the right people to get them out of their situation? The reason can be as simple as the fear of enduring something far worse than what is already experienced back at home. One prominent example of this involves a particular system which the American government has utterly failed thus far: foster care.
Any child currently in foster care can attest to the instability and even downright hostility of this oppressive system. State studies like these have confirmed that nearly one in three children in foster care are abused by their foster parents or other adult figures in the home. Children in foster homes are twenty-eight times more likely to experience abuse in general and four times more likely to experience sexual abuse. More than half of the children recovered from FBI raids on sex trafficking were from foster care and group homes. The statistics for foster care are horrendous. Given these statistics, why would a child risk uprooting themselves from one abusive household to another which is very likely to pose even more danger?
Abusers who understand this cruel situation for their victims gleefully take advantage of it. Some abusers will mockingly goad the survivors to “go ahead and call child protection services,” knowing full well that the survivors won’t be able to out of fear of an even crueler punishment than the ones currently endured at home. This issue doesn’t pertain solely to children of abusive households either.
Spouses of domestic abuse are often paralyzed with this “fear of something far worse” should they choose to leave their abusive partner. Often lacking the basic resources and community necessary to help them get back on their feet once they leave, victors of spousal abuse are often left to fend for themselves and, if applicable, their children. This has the unfortunate consequence of opening the survivors up to their abusive partners again, who will then utilize whatever manipulative means necessary—even violence—to coax them back home. Once again in each of these cases, survivors are placed between a rock and a hard place as they’re forced to decide which option is the lesser of two evils.
These are some of the main reasons victors of abuse are hesitant to open up about their traumatic pasts. Unfortunately for them, this reticence tends to deprive survivors of the necessary resources to break free from the cycle of abuse. This often and tragically results in survivors perpetuating the cycle of abuse with families they create themselves. Either by choosing to be with an abusive partner or becoming that abusive partner themselves, survivors who fail to break free from the cycle of abuse prolong the lifespan of generational abuse.
We need to dive deeper into the research and ask more comprehensive questions to get to the bottom of the cycle of abuse. What are the general consequences for those who have been abused? What negative and harmful side effects must they endure from their past experiences with abuse? Do these harmful effects pervade beyond their childhood into their adulthood? What forms of therapy, if any, can be administered to relieve survivors of their troubled pasts? Beyond these commonly asked questions posed by psychologists, a more profound question emerges: Are there any advantages to growing up in such a hostile environment?
This article is intended as reference for a Twitch
speaking session on the cycle of abuse.
This is Part One of the series.