Do you know what I hate??
When I was growing up any time my brother upset/hurt/was rude to or downright nasty to me I was told “he’s just doing it to get a rise out of you” “he’s just doing it to annoy you”
Like??? I know?? I know he’s being mean to upset me. I know he’s saying horrible stuff to annoy me. And guess what?? I’m annoyed!!!!
I was literally told not to be upset, because his intentions were to upset me????
How is that not upsetting? Especially to a young girl??
THE GASLIGHTING STARTS EARLY.
As I was relentlessly bullied, I was often told not to react because the reaction was what they wanted, and that they would stop bullying me if I did not respond.
In reality, no, they just tried harder. All the advice ever taught me was to bottle up all the pent up frustration and misery, so ultimately what changed was that no-one knew how badly I was suffering.
Nothing is changed by inaction.“Ignore them and they’ll go away,” is the most horrible damaging fucking lie I was ever told. If you don’t react, then they know they can bully you without consequences.
And why, if they were in the wrong, was it my fucking job to deal with it?
I still get told this when my teenage brother is being mean (I’m almost 20). It still makes me furious, and I still don’t have a good comeback.
I got told this when it was literally an adult man picking at me, a disabled little girl, until I would cry. Because his wife was my mother’s friend and said wife would get defensive and even angry if I (or anyone) dared get angry at her husband for being an arse to everyone because “that’s just what he does”. Somehow a disabled child was supposed to summon up levels of maturity and acceptance that a grown man was just apparently unable to manage.
People like this don’t want to take responsibility for policing their own behaviour, but if you get sick of their BS and start doing the policing for them, look out. Because they or their enablers will consider you the actual bad guy.
…holy shit. Holy. Jesus Christ, give me a minute to process this.
I…have never considered that the whole point of someone harassing you was to get a rise out of you. I have lived my whole life thinking that “they’re just doing it to upset you” was a completely legitimate criticism of MY behavior.
I am eighteen years old and I have considered myself a freak for my entire life because I was always upset.
Holy fuck, this would mean I was within my rights to be angry all those years because…people were trying to make me angry? That…that logic might take a few days–months–years to settle in.
