GOAL: ACKNOWLEDGE

Let's Acknowledge Mental Abuse

It all begins at home, with the first people to enter our lives: our caretakers.

We don't notice it when it's happening to us because as brand new humans in the world (children), we don't know what "normal" is. We assume our lives are normal, and everybody's lives are basically the same.

It's not until we meet other people, go to school, visit other families, watch movies and read, that we start to notice discrepancies between the outside, and our own personal experience of home.

Honestly, physical abuse is sometimes better - it's easier to spot; it's unambiguously bad.

Bruises or scratches from a caretaker are immediately flagged by social services once a report is received.

The survivor is promptly removed from that environment. Physical abuse is then mostly, ideally, stopped.

Mental abuse is trickier. For one thing, it's virtually invisible.

It is also far more insidious and extensive in its damage of a human life over the course of decades - from battered self-worth, to faulty executive function, to an inability to recognize or cultivate healthy relationships.

The damage sustained, if not mindfully treated, can then be passed onto other relationships, including offspring, creating a whole network of trauma spanning all of humanity, in all environments, public and private.

Without acknowledging mental abuse, the cycle of pain continues.

Exercise

SELF-DISCOVERY

1. Have you ever been hurt by your parents, physically or emotionally?


2. Do you think you deserved it? Why or why not?


3. When your parents hurt you, do you believe it's accidental, or intentional, or somewhere in between?