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I've been abused and bullied for years even as a child/young teenager, and my friend told me it was my fault and that if I wasn't such a subhuman waste of space, I wouldn't be abused and then believed all the lies her friends made about me. She then "forgave" me (IDK what I did wrong, I may have, though) but what she said still hurts. Is it a person's fault for being abused?

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[-] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It was not your fault. I'm sorry that this person said that to you, because I am 100% sure that it was bullshit and a supremely unkind thing to say to a person.

Sometimes, survivors of awful things will try to rationalise what happened, and try to think about things they could have done differently (I'm speaking from personal experience here, but this is widely documented). It can feel comforting in a way, because it can give a sense of power, and a sense that it's possible to protect oneself in future. Unfortunately, this is, in the long term, not a helpful approach. Even if there are theoretically things that a person could have done that might have prevented some of their abuse, that still doesn't make it their fault. The only people who are at fault are the people who do and say awful things — including this person (who is not deserving of your friendship if they would be so cruel). I don't know whether you have noticedyourself doing this kind of rationalisation, but I describe it to highlight how common it is for people to spiral into self doubt and self blame, when the blame lies solely with the people who perpetrate abuse.

Perhaps this person was doing some rationalisation of her own — sometimes people are so uncomfortable with the awfulness that people are capable of that they explain it away, which can result in victim blaming, like what she did to you. Regardless, there is no excuse to speak to another person as she did to you.

Something that I have found helpful in the past when struggling with things that people have said to me is to imagine myself saying those same cruel things to a dear friend. Even imagining it makes me feel sick, and this is helpful because it reminds me that these things are not okay to say to anyone. Another variant is imagining how I would comfort a friend if someone else had said these things to them and they were hurting from it. This strategy is useful to calibrate my sense of what's okay or not, because I find it hard to show myself compassion, and sometimes my negative self talk is filled with awful stuff that I would never dream of saying to another person. It takes work to remind ourselves that we did not deserve the cruelty we faced, and that we deserve compassion and respect.

Try to keep reminding yourself of this as often as is needed. It takes work, but I think it can be useful to think about healing from abuse as being similar to rehabilitating a physical injury. It takes time, and it is also much harder to heal if you are unable to find a safe space in which to recover. It sounds like you are feeling betrayed by your "friend", and rightfully so — our friends should be a part of how we build a safe space in which to process our trauma and heal, and she chose to behave disgustingly (this is not hyperbole — I am literally disgusted by her actions).

You did not do anything wrong. You did not deserve the abuse and bullying that you experienced, nor did you deserve to be blamed for things that were not your fault.

On a more positive note, I want to say that I'm really proud of you for posting here. I know that you're full of so much hurt and self doubt that you don't know what to believe, but I would wager that you came here to ask for advice because something in you knew that what she said was not okay. I want you to dig deep and find the part of you that brought you here and nurture it; allow it to grow and to guide you, because that is the part that is telling you that you deserve care and safety, and it is right.

this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2025
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