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Society often assumes that good support will be available to childhood abuse survivors if they reach out for help & “talk to someone”. You assume this because you know it’s what we deserve, at the very basic level. But I’m here to tell you tonight that we do NOT get this support.
Most of us (especially women) just get a diagnosis of BPD/EUPD, which opens us up to stigma and abuse from the services who are supposed to help us. We are told constantly ON A LOOP that our behaviour needs to change and that we need to build resilience and “do better” at coping.
We are shamed into thinking that we’re not coping with the aftermath of abuse in the same way other survivors do, and that this is our own fault. We are silenced by the very people who Society assumes will help give us our voice back. We are abused and gaslighted all over again.
Hardly any of us get offered trauma therapy, and those who do are only offered time limited therapy. A therapy so short in time, that survivors often have to bend over backwards to “prove” that we are ready for it.
Voluntary services are often recommended to abuse survivors as suitable alternatives to NHS MH services, but pretty much all of them are closed to new referrals for therapy because their waiting lists are huge. There are even waiting lists to get on to the actual waiting list.
Nobody explains confidentiality to us in the NHS, so before we know it, 50 odd profs are privy to our trauma histories, despite us never consenting to that. Most of us also find the word “alleged” shoved on our records because the rights of the abuser are placed ahead of ours.
When we struggle with the aftermath of abuse & self harm to cope, professionals are quick to tell us how we are only self harming to “illicit support or care from services” which is fancy speak for “manipulative and attention seeking”, when in reality, we are just trying to cope.
By the end of it all, our “credibility” in the court of law is also *absolutely trashed*, so all those people telling us to report to the police are wasting their time because the reality is, we have almost zero chance of getting any kind of justice. The burden of proof is on us.
In order to receive compassionate care from the NHS, we have to show how we can “recover” within a time frame set by them & to do so in whatever ways they deem acceptable. Any deviance from this, & we’re out on our ears. We are also expected to put up with lots of victim blaming.
There are also LOTS of survivors who have been so harmed by services in the past, that they are determined to never ever go back to those services again for support, even when they are struggling so much. Because they know what will happen if they do. And that’s not OK at all.
So please. When you tell us to reach out for help, please just realise that most of us don’t actually get the help we need. Because it’s not there! It doesn’t exist. The help you know in your hearts that we deserve doesn’t actually exist. Go shout at the NHS instead.
I’ll never stop tweeting about this stuff. The reality of the actual support on offer for abuse survivors is so different to what some of you actually *assume* is on offer, and that even includes some of you professionals. Don’t kid yourselves into thinking we are getting help.
