Anyone else hear their abuser’s words in their head?

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verystressedout Asked July 2023

Anyone else hear their abuser’s words in their head?

My “mom” is abusive. I’m not sure you can really call her my “mom”. She’s so cruel and jealous towards me. She made me suffer for years.

She has health issues. I helped. I’m extremely low contact with her. I speak with her caregivers, but sometimes she screams in the background. Insulting me. The caregivers try to keep a distance, knowing she’ll abuse me, but she can scream loud.

Do any of you hear your abuser’s words in your head? The conversation (or versions of it) (or what you could have said). It takes me days to get it out of my head.

Abusive Relationship Burnout Mental Health

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score 2 · Answer 1

Thanks for all your words. My mom is alive. Completely by chance, I’m not helping anymore. I am free.

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score 0 · Answer 2

I hope that you are seeking help now.
You are grown. It is time to leave things of childhood behind and to move away from abusers.
Quite honestly you have now to be responsible for taking care of yourself and not martyring yourself to your abuser, and it sounds like that is exactly what you are doing.
Pat yourself on the back because it is terribly hard to leave well -worn, well-taught paths the abuser plows through your brain.

When you can look at her and know that she is a failure, a sad creature who is limited by her own abuse or her genes or both, so that she could not be a mother, so that she could not earn ever the love and admiration and thanks of her child--does it get more sad than that--when you can look at her and feel sorry for her you will know you have grown and nurtured yourself to healing.

We all hear the bad. We can hear 1,000 good things about ourselves, but that one bad thing will ring in our heads over and over again. We who are well know our own limitations, and no one is harder on ourselves than we are. And when we hear one negative word it feeds that awful alien within us that says "I am no good. I am no darned good". For those of us who grew up in abuse (I am not one) that voice must be very loud and very strong and very hard to stamp out. But with help it can be done.

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score 1 · Answer 3

This is an old post/question but I know others have this same problem.
So I felt I had to chime in.
1. An abused person should NOT be a caregiver for the abuser.
2. In the case of "verystressedout" I think the best way for her to communicate with the caregivers is by texting them.

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score 1 · Answer 4

Yes, all if them and it's powerful.

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score 0 · Answer 5

This post is from July. OP responded back when she posted and not since.

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score 1 · Answer 6

Hi,
I'm glad to see this question because every morning I wake up thinking about things my father has said to me. It is like I'm having an argument with him in my head. I'm not sure how to stop this. I usually just try to focus on something fun and joyful or call a friend. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. I hate the damage that has been done to those of us! It is life altering. Blessings to you!

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score 2 · Answer 7

“Rather than listening to your mom’s self-hatred. Ultimately, that’s all it is - her self-hatred projected onto you.”

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“Unfortunately for us victims of N parents, we are the 'Family Trash Cans' to dump their emotional trash.”

(4)

score 5 · Answer 8

This might help me. Maybe other people too:

“I realized that I was giving my NParents NSupply in absentia, and they would be delighted to know I was thinking of them. So I stopped.”

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score 2 · Answer 9

I see this advice from the internet:

“I think of my mom’s abusive words constantly.. but now, as I’ve been recommended, I think of what I'd like to have done all those years she abused me...”

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score 2 · Answer 10

Not exactly like 'hearing voices', but yes, I remember their words.
It comes up now and again.

To forgive my mother, I adopted the phrase: "She did the best she could with who she was at the time".
Nah, she didn't.

So many years ago.

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score 5 · Answer 11

It would be interesting to know if there's any research about caregivers and PTSD. There should be.

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It would be the biggest library in the universe, and it would take up so much space on the internet, the internet would explode.
:)

Happy caregiving to everyone.

(4)

score 3 · Answer 12

This happens to me. I think it happens to every person who’s abused.

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score 2 · Answer 13

On this topic, I saw on the internet:

“I'm constantly arguing, it's like living in a house and we hate each other. One of us is an absolute bitch and I'm not sure which is me.”

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And this:

“I am constantly having conversations with people who stress me out in my head. It’s a lot of arguing or explaining myself.”

(2)

score 5 · Answer 14

Yes, absolutely.

But after many years of therapy, it's not the only 'voice in my head' and I don't acknowledge it.

Maybe some counseling could help you.

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Already did counseling. The abuse only stays in my head for a few days. I can’t make it shorter. I can’t prevent it from going around in my mind.

(0)

score 3 · Answer 15

Oh yeah !! Yes, Yes, and Yes . Can go on for years .

Helpful Answer (3)

:(

For me, days…Right now in fact, her words are in my head, and I reply in all sorts of ways. You know, they never admit they’re wrong, so you keep re-playing the conversation, in order to reason with them in your head, but then it turns out that also in your head they never say, “Sorry, you were right.” Instead, you re-live lots of versions of the abusive conversation, but every ending continues to remain frustrating.

(2)