Our Parents Used Weapons Instead Of Words
Tags: Life Lessons, Love, Self Improvement, Relationships, Life

Your Abuse Has Been Normalized

I’ve witnessed different generations, including mine, normalize physically abusive parents. I’ve heard too many people praising their parents, solely for beating them. Attributing their growth as an adult to the abuse they suffered as a child. While simultaneously involved in strings of abusive relationships, addictions and the constant searching for a gentler love, confused as to why.

It’s because our parents groomed us for abuse. And we’ve mastered the art of believing we were responsible for it. We’ve learned to blame ourselves when love becomes violent because we were blamed by our parents when their love for us turned violent.

Our Parents Spoke With Weapons (Not Words)

In every conversation I’ve heard, or taken part in, there were two very alarming statements revealed that our parents always used as justification for beating us.

1. I’m doing this because I love you

Your beatings had nothing to do with love. If your beatings were a result of love then ask your self this; When you were beaten, and it turned out they were wrong, did you get an apology? No. Instead, they either found another mistake you made to blame this beating on or they simply acted as if nothing happened. How simple was an apology?

How was having your suffering blatantly ignored supposed to enhance your growth? It wasn’t. Because that isn’t the point of being beaten. These beatings had everything to do with power and control, brutality and rage. But never love.

2. Beating you hurts me more than it hurts you

It will not hurt them more. This is called gaslighting. It won’t hurt them more to abuse you than it will hurt you to be abused and left to live in a constant state of fear. It won’t hurt them more than it will hurt you, because you are the one being physically beaten. This is how they invalidate your experience, your pain and your feelings.

This is a manipulative statement designed to make you feel responsible for them choosing to beat you; by making you believe you caused them so much pain that they were compelled to violently attack you, to teach you to accept violence as the only choice and the only way. But it wasn’t the only way. Communication was always an option. Our parents chose to speak with weapons, instead of words.

Confrontation was communication to our parents

Confrontation and communication often meant the same thing because abusive parents don’t know how to communicate. And that has always been the problem. They beat us because they lack significant communication skills.What they considered communicating was just verbal abuse. They didn’t know, or try to learn, how to talk to us. And this was not our fault.

They Chose To Damage Us Instead Of Talk To Us

And for every conversation they chose not to have with us, came a price that we all had to pay.

We were humiliated

There many times our abuse became humiliating. Humiliation is a dangerous trauma to suffer consistently. Being humiliated kept us from being ourselves. The embarrassment we experienced in our most vulnerable states didn’t make us better people. It taught us to beat ourselves up, whenever we fuck up. It made us unable to forgive ourselves. We aren’t ‘perfectionists’ for no reason. We’re afraid of what will happen to us if we’re not perfect.

We became passive aggressive

We look at people who are passive aggressive and we make them out to be these horrible people, and granted it’s a horrible way to act, but it was still a strategy that helped us survive youth. We became passive aggressive out of not wanting to be honest. Our honesty usually ended up having major consequences. So, passive aggression was the only way we could avoid abuse in most cases. Lying was a survival strategy.

We became silent

Slowly we stopped talking. Becoming too intimidated to speak up because we knew the explosive reactions we’d receive. We stifled our anger, and over time, we too became reactive instead of respondent because it’s all we knew. All our parents did was react-and they did it with weapons.

They taught us how to live in fear

We’re became watered down versions of ourselves. Cutting ourselves off from our own self-esteem, becoming ashamed of the parts of ourselves that we now hide. You know what I’m talking about. It’s in the way we shrink ourselves in fear of rejection and any kind of violence, forfeiting our right to have a voice in order to survive. And stifling that voice, and that rage, made us sick and toxic as every abuse tactic taught us how to diminish our character. And water ourselves down.

Abuse Breeds Abuse

Being beaten and degraded, by a parent, also has a life-altering impact on the relationships we develop with other people. But the influences of our childhoods become clear once we start subconsciously (but actively) seeking out toxic partners to resolve our parental issues with.

The Romantic Mirror

We’ve grown up associating love with some form of violence. And we’ve attracted people who do the very same, and blame our selves for that too. Just as our parents blamed us as they beat us. With that blame, we’ve learned to tolerate abuse from the people we love, based on the years we’ve endured it at home. At the hands of the people who claim to love us.

When we start finding these toxic partners, our parents often question how we seem to end up with people who can’t treat us right. People who treat us the way they did. And whether we’ve come to terms with this or not, our parents are responsible for us engaging in these abusive relationships. Because they groomed us for it.

Everything comes full circle

And then they question how we end up with people who can’t treat us right. People like them. People who treat us like they did. They accuse us of wanting to be “treated like shit”. They reason that we must enjoy being kicked around, taken advantage of, cheated on and mistreated. But they never accuse themselves.

They become angry with our partners-and with us. Holding each of us responsible, but not themselves for setting the example we followed. Refusing to see the relationships they created with us reflected in our personal relationships with others. Because that’s a mirror they can’t look into.

Come To Terms With Your Story

You are strong enough to change your life

But first you have to come to terms with your history. But, let’s be honest, who actually wants to admit the people standing in their way are their parents? No one. But it’s a common reality. Every beating was physical abuse. You Were Abused.

Your story will not stand alone

And neither will you. Fortunately, we live in a time where this issue is becoming a bigger discussion. You still have those rights you thought they had beaten out of you. Claim those rights, break the cycle and stop laughing about your parents fucking you up. Parents do not ever become never heroes for beating their children. Please stop giving them that credit.