Friend didn't want me to talk to her about my upsetting personal stuff

[Sparklybutold]

Friend staying for the weekend. I experienced an extremely toxic and abusive childhood filled with suicide, murder, severe mental illness, premature death, all forms of abuse, the list goes on. This is a relatively new friendship so we are getting to know each other so naturally stuff about my childhood comes up. Later on in the day when the conversation swayed that way again she commented along the lines how my stories are just so sad - I asked whether she preferred I stopped, she said yes - I did. I was left feeling hurt, confused, invalidated but also kinda empathised. The stories are awful and just so sad, so much so that part of me switches off from them and I struggle to believe they're actually true. Alot of my experiences are also filled with shame and I was silenced so much, so to then be silenced again because it's too much?

This experience makes me question how can I be close with this person if she can't tolerate the not so nice parts of me? Is this reasonable? I couldn't imagine switching someone off like this?

@TedMullins

And maybe women who are unapologetic about laying down boundaries about not being forced to discuss things should be honoured too.

You haven’t responded to my post about your stance being anti-consent:

But @TedMullins noone has a right to talk to another person about anything.

Your statement is anti-consent.

Problem is, sometimes in order not to talk about childhood abuse, you'd basically have to lie. E.g if a friend asked "what were Christmases like when you were young?" There may be literally nothing normal you could say. If the day was always full of violence and chaos, and nothing was ordinary, what can you say?

I guess "quite tricky in my family, but now I'm able to have lovely Christmases with traditions like... etc" But it's very much sugar coating for the other person's feelings, which might feel a bit fake in a close friendship.

I think I’m close friendships where rapport and mutual trust has been established, sharing truth is a real part of that intimacy.

@TedMullins wow. You think it’s okay for you to say to me thst I don’t know much about abusers. When I have disclosed that I have suffered unspecified childhood trauma. JUST WOW.

I have absolutely no desire or need to tell you what I’ve been though. But that’s the whole point - you have this assumption that you have experienced trauma like no other.

and there is a very big difference between being unapologetic and being honest.

you are not being honest at all.

It entirely depends on the context. Something that is completely missing from your story.

OP said the context was speaking of her childhood. For example her friend may have shared where she grew up and may have asked OP same. OP may have said that she had to move a lot because her dad was abusive and they were feeling him then her mother died and she lived with foster parents by the seaside. That's pretty fucking traumatic but it also is an honest answer.

If I was on a date with a new boyfriend and he gave me that answer I would look for cues. Was he telling me this as its simply the answer to the question? Did he find it hard to say? If he seemed okay speaking about it I may ask him does he keep in touch with his foster parents. If he seemed to find it difficult I would tell him I also had a shit childhood (likely in those words) and then change the subject.

For the 100000th time there is nuance to this subject and no blanket rules.

The response to OP has been awful and really says a lot about people's attitude to trauma. Trauma victims are not a problem for you to solve.

I would be totally unphased by it and listen to them. I’d say that sounds really hard and I’m sorry they’ve been through it. If I could relate to them in any way through personal experience I’d tell them that. Then the conversation would probably organically move on.

I don’t think there’s anything unhealthy about the above exchange. I actually agree that if EVERY conversation turned back to trauma then there may be a problem. Being able to talk matter of factly about it from a place of acceptance (which is what I do if the topic arises) is different from turning it around to be about trauma at every opportunity. I’ve dealt with someone like this as well, while they were having a psychotic episode. In that instance, where it is clearly more than just honest conversation, I’d calmly suggest they needed professional support it if there was a friend or family member I could have the contact details of in case I needed to alert them of anything. I would say, I really want to be a supportive friend but I don’t feel I can give you what you need, so think about going back to the doctor etc. I’d check in on them periodically to ensure they weren’t in any danger.

I've been where you are, OP. So many times. I've felt it was wrong not to reply honestly to questions about my awful childhood but have discovered most people can't handle even that. Its not personal, its not a rejection of you. They simply don't have the capacity.

Not their fault.
BUT that can be very isolating for you.

Do you have the opportunity to access some professional listening meantime whilst you work out how to reply honestly yet in a way people can cope with (not easy!). Then it might feel less invalidating for you. Sending good wishes to you in your journey x

@TedMullins you are coming across loud and clear as someone who should not be around traumatised people.

You actually said that whether or not a rape victim is 'allowed' to not want to hear about someone else being raped would depend on how well they expressed themselves. Wtf.

Many, perhaps most, of us on this thread have suffered some fairly severe traumas in life. That doesn't give anyone carte blanche to dismiss and ridicule others' feelings or t say that one 'trumps'the other (it's not a game).

There is something extremely worrying and nasty in your posts

Sorry, I misread this - I thought you meant the new friend wanted to talk about it. To answer the above scenario if another friend came over when I was in the middle of a meal with someone else I’d firstly try and ascertain if they were in crisis. If they were, I’d abandon the meal to help them. If they weren’t, I’d gently tell them I’d give them a ring later, and try and get to the bottom of why they felt they needed help at that moment. The rest of what I said still applies.

@Miffee the responses have for the most part been from trauma victims - and many from trauma victims
who have found healthy ways to move on telling that from their perspective the ops response is not healthy.

and then there’s been @TedMullins talking about Ted Mullins

Side note - who asks about childhood etc! Nuts.

If people don’t want to disclose their trauma that’s entirely their right. But I don’t go around assuming everyone has secret trauma they’re not disclosing. There is a world of difference between saying ‘I’m really sorry but I find this conversation very upsetting and triggering, do you mind if we change it?’ and simply declaring ‘I don’t want to hear this’. That’s what I meant about how well they expressed themselves. Being a rape victim - I am one - doesn’t deprive you of the ability to be courteous to other people.

your deserved and justified anger needs to be directed at the perpetrators; not at a friend who wanted a girly weekend.
and have you thought of the reasons she maybe didn’t want to hear it “again,” or only thought about your feelings being silenced?
maybe she’s had an awful life too, maybe she likes to live in la la land, maybe she was too hot to be listening to that sort of darkness, maybe she has kids and can’t bear to think of abuse to kids, maybe she actually just doesn’t care and wanted wine and crackers only
all these things are totally fine reasons to not want to be forced to listen to really harrowing shit

i am really sorry about your past and really hope you find peace

You don't need to tell anyone the details. 💐 Most of us understand and respect that, and I would never ever assume that someone wasn't a trauma victim unless they specifically said otherwise. Everyone should be treated with sensitivity without being pressured to open up and share private stories. It's not a competition and it's not ok to bully people or to judge them as inferior if they can't deal with hearing or talking about certain subjects.

With all due respect what she said was true. Abusers come in all flavours as do victims of abuse.

Picking a characteristic and assigning it to abusers is really unhelpful. It makes people think they are easy to spot, it also makes people doubt abuse because the abuser doesn't fit the stereotype.

Both victims and abusers can have all sorts of personality traits.

Yeah; I can well imagine how her reciprocal 'listening' relationships work - lots of impatiently waiting for the other person to stop talking . . .

@TedMullins well something has deprived you of your ability to be courteous and show empathy for the people on this thread who have explicitly told you that they have suffered serious trauma

Every time I talk to my dad he will bring it back to his bad childhood.
What are you doing today?
Taking the kids shopping.
My dad used to spend all the money on gambling so we couldn't go shopping...

Imagine this this for every conversation. Its too much. I have my own shit to deal with. And I am very sympathetic and can listen and listen but I am not a therapist.

I think therapy makes some people really selfish. You get into a mode of thinking that everyone has to listen and to help you because you suffered and its always a one-up-manship.

You can say they weren’t good without giving details. There are different levels of sharing.

Well I’m not a mind reader am I. If I don’t know they’ve experienced trauma it’s only reasonable I’ll come to my own (possibly wrong) assumptions about why they can’t make time to listen to other people’s. I don’t think it’s anyone’s loss just entirely incompatible approaches.

I don't think it is reasonable to make harsh judgements on others based only on what you perceive in that moment, trauma victims react in many different ways. You only accept those that react to trauma by being willing to be open and willing to hear anything that those around want to share. There are many groups that advocate this and there is definitely a place for this is relationships and in trauma-based work. But it is not the only way and does not meet my needs or my situation (or I should think, many others). I don't think I should not feel that I have to pay my price to being a part of friendships (or society in general), through having to listen to things I find traumatising or by sharing things I don't want to share.

Or maybe women being unapologetic about who they are and what they’ve experienced is just confronting and scary because society tells us to put our needs last all the time.

I think slightly differently. Women have been historically taught that it is their role to soak up the emotional distress of others. It is only recently that I have realised that putting myself first means not having to do that. Not placating, listening, soaking up others problems. There are many ways of being, and coping with situations. Maybe if we all just accepted that things would be better.

@Miffee .
No the responses to the op have been mostly from those who've suffered abuse. But the difference is we have enough social awareness to realise that we really aren't that special and not one person owes us anything. Whether that's time,support, sympathy etc. We get on with because we don't need the validation of others and the label of a "trauma survivor ". We don't want anyone's elses life shit as much as we don't put "our" life shit on others and just expect other people to put up and shut up while smiling and nodding to our horrific tale.

Well, I disagree. Unless it’s hate speech everyone has a right to talk about what they want. The listener has an equal right to shut it down and walk away, of course, but the talker is then entitled to feel disappointed and let down.

no one has the absolute right to go through life never hearing about anything they find triggering. That’s just not how the world works. Trauma survivors do not have a duty to censor themselves.

YABVU

Seems your need to be validated and listened to, trumps her right to ask not be exposed to your personal tales of woe.

Id run a mile from you. She may be a better person.

Fine for you to have this approach but you don’t speak for all trauma survivors. The great thing about the world we live in is that actually everyone on this thread is entitled to feel as they do, but we’re also all entitled to disagree with each other and hold different opinions.

It's irrelevant that they have been from victims. The fact is OP put nowhere near enough info in her post for people to infer what they have. Yet immediately the friend is given the benefit of the doubt.

I can't help but think this is because OP, being a trauma victim, is naturally viewed as unreliable.

I could go through this thread and list the things OP has been accused of and compared to. BPD, friends who ring you at 4 am, trauma dumping, expecting her friend to be a therapist. These aren't even singular examples, most are common themes.