rynnicolas:

littlemousling:

weirdlyghostly:

feferi:

there has been a pretty far-reaching trend on this website to blog about the effects of mental illness and trauma on emotional regulation and an aggressive campaign to get people to not only understand but accept boundary-crossing behavior from people because it is a reflection of their mental illness/trauma, as far as to imply that you are ableist if you are not able to tactfully handle and accept someone else’s dysfunctional coping mechanisms and behavior despite your own discomfort. i see this most often with posts about bpd but there are other topics as well. i haven’t commented on any of it because it’s not a pie i wanted a finger in, but it has over time led me to develop severe discomfort around people who follow that line of thought to the point that i have disengaged, unfollowed, and unfriended many people who agree with it.

the stuff i’m seeing passed around now about “supporting perpretrators” in addition to survivors is the horrifying track down which that train of thought has sped, because what people don’t seem to understand is that mental illness and trauma do no make you an exception to the boundaries of those around you. it is necessary to be aware of the ways that survivors and mentally ill people may lash out emotionally at those they are close to but it is not actually necessary to be “accepting” to the point that it is harmful to you. your emotional boundaries are important, more important than whatever obligation you feel to “accommodate” someone’s trauma.

it is not “okay” that survivors sometimes display manipulative/abusive behaviors towards the people around them and it is important to handle these situations with tact, sure, but not to the detriment of setting your own boundaries and checking the behaviors in question. when friends i know are mentally ill/ trauma survivors have lashed out at me with emotionally manipulation tactics in times of great distress, i have supported them afterward, but i have always followed this up with a discussion about how these kinds of behaviors can not and will not continue or our relationship will end. this is not “ableist” or refusing to support survivors’ trauma, it is setting strong boundaries within the context of supporting each other and providing the community in which we all can heal. what is important here is that these are isolated incidents – learned defense mechanisms arising in times of panic and stress – and not consistent grabs for power. these are not people following the deliberate, overarching pattern of actions abusers use to isolate and control victims, and their actions are easily distinguishable from such.

my point is that this discourse has allowed people to blur the line between these behaviors and abuse when it comes to community support. we should support abusers in our communities as well, they say, because otherwise we would be isolating vulnerable marginalized people who are just struggling with their own trauma. this is exactly what abusers want. this is not a radical attitude. abusers depicting themselves as helpless victims of emotions and circumstances out of their control has pretty much always been the abuser party line. there is nothing productive or useful or valid about carving out community resources for “accountability” in ways that perpetuate bad abuse politics and logics that have been used to silence survivors for years and years. you cannot support survivors and also support their abusers by continuing to welcome them in the same community spaces, period, and it takes some ridiculous mental gymnastics to pretend otherwise.

i apparently can no longer bold things in posts made by other people so can i just. make a short list of points that i think are REALLY important here:

  • “what people don’t seem to understand is that mental illness and trauma do no make you an exception to the boundaries of those around you.”

  • “it is not “okay” that survivors sometimes display manipulative/abusive behaviors towards the people around them [….]   when friends i know are mentally ill/ trauma survivors have lashed out at me with emotionally manipulation tactics in times of great distress, i have supported them afterward, but i have always followed this up with a discussion about how these kinds of behaviors can not and will not continue or our relationship will end”

I have literally seen the argument made that asking people to apologize for hurting you is ableist because some people’s mental illness “doesn’t allow them to feel empathy” or that they literally cannot help splitting on you so that means they can do it all they want and if you can’t handle it then you’re ableist, and like. No. No. No. No. No. No.

After my post about warning signs for abuse, I got a number of anon asks essentially saying the post was ableist, particularly against those with BPD. It was clear that what the askers meant was that expecting people not to engage in abusive manipulation like tearing down one’s partner’s self-esteem, making jealous demands, threatening violence or self-harm, etc, was an unmeetable and ableist expectation for people with BPD.

I don’t agree. Everyone deserves to live a life free of abuse. The person who engages in abusive tactics may themselves have a great need for support, but that does not permit or excuse the abuses. 

As the OP says, there is a major difference between lashing out/making mistakes, and actively perpetrating abuse. But it’s important to keep in mind that many people who actively perpetrate abuse do so while constantly prioritizing and putting forward their own vulnerability, their own emotional needs, their own sense of victimization. “I am too broken to treat you well,” with the strongly implied “so you have to put up with these abuses or you are the abuser” is, unfortunately, a very typical means of keeping a person close while continuing to abuse them. 

There aren’t easy answers, but it must be the right of a person receiving abuse to leave a relationship to protect themselves, period, without having to justify that act of self-protection. 

“I am too broken to treat you well,” with the strongly implied “so you have to put up with these abuses or you are the abuser”