Ok I talked to a good friend of mine last knight. and we talked about what i wrote. not being listened to and not being believed are two different things. hangingon and Larrry and others have commented on "no being believed" what about not being listoned to?

what you all said about not being believed is right on. but not being listened to for me is much worse, and last knight the answer may have been found at too why. when people dont listen to you, it devalues you. and that hurts when a survivor is working on self worth or when a survivor has worked hard at self worth. i have worked hard to know what i am worth and evertime some one dose not listen to me or "hear me out" then it not only hurts me as a survivor but it hurts things i have worked hard for as a survivor.

love ya stacks,
kirk

i think if we talk about it to normals they have their defenses also ,you know they have walls to and to them the world has to be a certain way or they just go off the rails,when we talk?their world goes off the rails .so they tune us out and who can blame them ?reality sucks but its our currency,its our world the one without the rose colored glasses,this is real ,we are real ,but if they listen their world might just burst apart like some rotten fruit. its almost like when you were little and found out santa wasnt real you know?we have the power to destroy the illusion of safety,its not why we talk but i think it is why they wont listen . lots of people go through their whole life without ever knowing what lurks just outside their front door,unlike us when they are faced with reality ,they just wanna slam the door and never come out again ,we had the guts to step out there even knowing that evil lives there. so we let them have their little safe dream world ,i think they wont listen or believe ,because they are afraid of the truth ,if they believe us then their illusion is destroyed. they dont wanna know that santa isnt real.

its not us they are afraid of its themselves its not our weakness they fear its theirs ,cause most of them know if they were in our shoes they coud not survive .

Kirk,

I think that many people who have not gone through the prolonged trauma and stress that come with a problem like CSA just don't understand how important it is for the survivor to feel he is being listened to.

After all, what do we want when we say we want others to listen to us? For me, I think what I want is to get the message back that my feelings and anxieties are important, and that how I feel counts for something with someone. If I pour out my heart to a friend and his response is to offer solutions, I think shit, that's not what I wanted. You're not listening. I feel the same way if I talk to my wife, for example, and she replies by saying that I do this or that too much. Damn it! You're not listening.

I guess genuine listeners (if that's a word) are a special rare category in the world. Perhaps you have to go through the experience of desperately needing someone to listen to you before you can appreciate how important it is to listen to others. It has helped me to understand that if someone doesn't seem to be a very good listener, that doesn't mean he doesn't care. The two things are really very different.

Much love,
Larry

like Larry was saying, but in other words, some one can "hear" you but not "listen" to you. they hear the words but do not comprehhend what you are saying.

Now, when I am talking to my father he refuses to listen or hear me. He treats me like im not even there. this hurts so much more than just not being listened to. my father was one of my perps althoug it was not csa. I fought back at age 16. after that he had little to nothing to do with me. we still talked every once in a while, but then the only problem i had with him was he would not listen to me. when i came out to my parents that im gay. he stopped hearing me, fact is he still wont look at me or touch me. three years later we are at least talking again even if he wont listen to me.

my mother hears me but 9 times out of ten times she will not listen to me. and when things go wrong after i tried my best to tell them, i get the blame, not that, that is any different from when i was growing up....I was forced to say "It's my fault, i was wrong. you did nothing worng, because your perfect. i'm the stupid one. It's my fualt." my mother made me repeat this for anything that went wrong with our family. even if she cuased or most of the time provoked it. (yes she would make things go wrong) I hated her for that for a long time, that and having to read her mind to know what it was that i did wrong. sorry went off on a different topic there. i guess i needed to get that out.

love ya stacks,
kirk

Kirk,

Someone has been waiting to talk to you, for years now. Talk and listen, to your inner self; and set yourself free.

Love 'n Light

Morning Star

When I first started to talk about it online, I was afraid I wouldn't be believed too... I was so relieved when all I got was support.
I told my father about his friend when I was 12 all I got was him beating me up and saying stuff like I can't believe you would lye about such a thing and all. So I kept it a secret until I was 15 and school sorta squezed it out of me.

Of course it hurts when someone doesn't listen to you... You tell them such a huge thing, wich is really hard to talk about anyway and then people act like they don't care or like it's no big deal.
I guess that's their way of protecting themselves, taking the coward way out; deciding not to believe or just ignore it so they won't have to deal whit it. Much easier..

Alex , your father beat up the wrong person

i think being devalued, such as not being belived or listened to is a major problem for survivors. we have a hard enough time believing we are worth something!

I dont know why it is so hard for others to see how much not being believed or listened to hurts us.

FEAR OF GETTING HURT or humiliated, keeps us rooted in our past childish behaviours of trying to be pleasing and keep the peace around, so much so that we often hurt our best interest just trying to become acceptable to others, which is a form of manipulation by the way.

We loose power to the external world as we want power from it. When some listens to us, or gives value to us or what we say, if that gives us a sense of personal power or boosts our self esteem, then when it is gone or no longer available we would naturally feel powerless.

That is when we realize that giving away power is a choice, so is self approval.

When we start deriving from within, and our ability to control our inner environment rather than external world, we come into our real power centre.

In the end, we all, as adults have to learn to build our own self esteem based on how we value ourselves, and not on how others value or praise us.

And unless we learn to do that we remain dependent on others and hence remain vulnerable to their rejection and manipulation.

Hurt at not being heard arises from our need for being heard, or being valued or listened to, and when we start doing that ourselves, we stop getting hurt, as other people loose that hold over us.

Morning Star