Jennifer's Journal

consequences - twitchy

One of the consequences of being a survivor of child abuse is that being around people who are fighting or having some kind of personal tension between them makes me nearly physically ill.

For example, one of my friends and her sister get on each others nerves on occasion. They love each a lot, but after a few days together, they start to get tense with each other. And it really shows.

When I was hanging out with them, I realized just how awful their tension was making me feel. In my family, that kind of tension would have led to a fight: shouting, screaming, terrible words, maybe blows.

Normally, I wouldn’t have been really aware of the depths of my discomfort. Normally, I wouldn’t have said anything and just tried to tough it out. But my therapist is working to get me to take better care of myself, which in part means that I’m slowly getting in better touch with how I’m feeling and actually doing something about it.

One of them said something about the other being so very stubborn, and I said, fairly lightly, what that kind of tension meant in my family, and that it made me feel like going home. I didn’t say it petulantly or angrily, just as an honest statement of my feelings. And things in the room got better.

I was still all roiled up when I got home, but I had spoken up and nothing horrendous happened. My friends cared about how I felt. This is progress.

Source: abuse-looks-like-this