Confronted my past abuser for the sake of healing, am feeling stuck going forward.

[lmfao]

I'll try and keep it brief. 20 year old male here. When I was 14/15, I found an online group of friends who'd play smash bros. I met them all on a public smash bros netplay website, but eventually everyone talked on a private discord server in 2016 (When im 16). 

I invested a lot of time into this online friendship group, I considered them good friends. I end up getting banned from the group out of the blue. Server owner decided to do it. I was essentially kicked out of a place I considered my home. I was kicked out by the people who I considered my friends, and that hurt. No one genuinely cared either or considered me a friend or stood up for me, it was accepted as just one of those things and everyone moved on.


Fastforward 1 year later, the group server splinters off into 2 servers. I join the second one. However the old server owner who hated me was active in the 2nd one and hated me. Things got worse from here on out. 

I was bullied for reasons I didn't understand, be made to believe I was crazy or retarded for 0 reason. I was so gaslighted and manipulated that I had little tangible memory from which to make sense. Made to feel retarded or crazy when I'm really not. I don't want to bore you all with specifics, but it was pretty darn bad. They made me believe I was "gullible" , socially retarded and would play cruel elaborate jokes that don't really count for jokes. And when I tried to fight back, I was degraded even further, belittled, bullied, and banned. 

Long story short, I end up getting banned, then unbanned, then banned again.This is by the 2nd server owner who was good friends with the 1st one.  And this time I don't go back

----
Fast forward to now. I decide to talk to the first server owner who banned me for closure. After greeting him the first thing he says degradingly is "who are you?" deliberately, I brush it aside and get him to engage in a discussion about the past.

I told him about all the pain I felt, mental breakdowns, anxiety, fear. The gaslighting (not exaggerating with that word), manipulating, maliciousness. 

He replies 

Quote

I honestly dont remember much and i pretty much moved on from that part of my life in terms of just making jokes at others expense

you honestly were mostly innocent if thats what you want to hear aside from blatant lack of social cues once in awhile which multiple people hopped on

i apologize about most of it but for the most part they were just jokes and you shouldnt have taken them seriously.

I explain more in detail about how bad it was, how it didn't feel like jokes 

Quote

i mean you can say its sadistic but it was pretty obviously a joke. again i apologize but i dont think anybody, including myself, genuinely disliked you

You took a lot of things seriously, and for most people they never thought if you were actually upset or if you were joking

defintely seemed like ajoke

again ive moved on from all that, and i hope you can sort through those feelings

I acknowledged what he said. I asked him what he's feeling.

Quote

idk im busy doing homework so stressed but im having the conversation with you

no real feeling

maybe i guess a slight hint of guilt

Later he said 

Quote

like i said i apologize

u can still dislike me but the feeling was never mutual

I then write a massive essay, detailing all he did as being beyond jokes. Detailing some important incidents, how they made me feel, what happened.  How it makes no sense for him to say he didn't dislike me, considering how malicious and cruel he was. And all the blatant insults and declarations he made of hating me. 

His response is the same 

Quote

I mean it was definitely just a joke. As I said before, I couldn’t tell if you genuinely took it to heart or not and it’s really hard to tell through text. Yes it was a mean joke but it is just a joke. I wasn’t trying to convince you of anything I was just participating in banter

im not gonna defend anything i did

like i said im sorry but ive moved on and dont really have anything to say

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
My problem is this. I built up this entire emotional thing in my mind, but I can't get this guy to be self aware of the injustice. It feels flat, a dead end and I don't know what to do with all this energy and annoyance. He gives a limp response, barely anything. It's like talking to a brick wall. I can't make him conscious of what he did. I asked and explained things multiple times, each time I got a stonewall response of "it was just jokes"

And so I don't know what to do with the emotions surfacing. Whether I continue the conversation, how or why or what. I'll ask him explicitly if he can admit to gaslighting or maliciousness. But I've already asked this multiple times, and each time it's a stonewall.


And so I don't know what to do. How to proceed, to continue the conversation, end it, what. I see the duality even more between suppression (holding things in)  and expression (blindly believing your mental stories), how neither is transcendence. But I'm stuck nonetheless, dithering in what to do or how to handle. Any advice? 


Let it be mentioned since it doesn't come across in the tone of this post, but I'm overwhelmingly glad I did/(am doing) this. I can feel the cleansing, positive emotions despite lots of overwhelming negative ones coming up.

Edited November 1, 2020 by lmfao

[diamondpenguin]

Make some money. And stay away from those toxic morons. We all love u here mane❤.And your irl real friends do to.

Edited November 1, 2020 by diamondpenguin

[No Self]

Sorry to hear you went through that. Online bullying is something that easily gets out of hand, since you have the worst elements of testosterone-fueled communities, everyone trying to prove they are 'tough', the need to put someone down in order to have a group identity and a lack of any real accountability.

You've done well to at least get an apology of sorts out of the guy. I don't think you'll get anything more out of him. Time to move on.

The next stage is dealing with the trauma. They say the best revenge is living well, and that is a good ambition to have. Having experienced suffering can make us deeper, more compassionate, more understanding people. It also means that we can help others going through the same thing. I wish I was nearly so far ahead when I was your age.

[Bando]

@lmfao Great job confronting this person! Always do this to people who cross certain boundaries. The fact he actually apologized and is still engaging with you is actually pretty surprising.

Your gonna meet assholes in your life thats inevitable but you have one advantage, you understand that this is only bad because it goes against your     Ego-mind and you can change the meaning of this experience. He's probably suffering from living his own life and is so numb to his emotions that he doesn't even know how to sympathize or see his own flaws thats gotta suck.

If you want to speed up this emotional cleansing find a way to forgive him and actually put yourself in his shoes and see what life is like from his angle. Letting go and challenging your limiting beliefs about this guy is what's going to heal you, not hearing his apology or getting him to see his own flaws, he'll change when he's ready.

[lmfao]

Thanks for the replies y'all. Yeah, so I've decided to just move on from it rather than trying to desperately push on more. I know it was a good healing. Unfortunately the positive emotions from healing didn't last, and I had a bad day today, so it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I pessimistically feel like the negative karma is infinite sometimes. Or I continually regenerate the negative karma through my addictions and coping mechanisms I engage in daily. 
 

22 hours ago, diamondpenguin said:

Make some money

Thanks for the advice Aristotle (playful comment, not sarcastically bitter)

21 hours ago, No Self said:

The next stage is dealing with the trauma. They say the best revenge is living well, and that is a good ambition to have. Having experienced suffering can make us deeper, more compassionate, more understanding people. It also means that we can help others going through the same thing. I wish I was nearly so far ahead when I was your age.

A meaningful relation to this isn't present in my mind about it, but I'm reminded of the Islamic myth that your "mountain of sins" becomes a mountain of blessings upon repenting to God. That the bad becomes transmuted into good. That would put a positive spin on trauma and bad experiences. They say adversity builds character. "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger". I'd have to be in a different state or more experienced to say I can confidently live by or know those words to be true. 
 

5 hours ago, Bando said:

He's probably suffering from living his own life and is so numb to his emotions that he doesn't even know how to sympathize or see his own flaws thats gotta suck.

If you want to speed up this emotional cleansing find a way to forgive him and actually put yourself in his shoes and see what life is like from his angle. Letting go and challenging your limiting beliefs about this guy is what's going to heal you, not hearing his apology or getting him to see his own flaws, he'll change when he's ready.

Right, letting go and accepting his perspective is the crux. Thankfully I'm not nearly so clouded by anger and fear of him like I was before, thanks to expressing it. 

Edited November 2, 2020 by lmfao

[Mu_]

On 11/1/2020 at 2:06 AM, lmfao said:

I'll try and keep it brief. 20 year old male here. When I was 14/15, I found an online group of friends who'd play smash bros. I met them all on a public smash bros netplay website, but eventually everyone talked on a private discord server in 2016 (When im 16). 

I invested a lot of time into this online friendship group, I considered them good friends. I end up getting banned from the group out of the blue. Server owner decided to do it. I was essentially kicked out of a place I considered my home. I was kicked out by the people who I considered my friends, and that hurt. No one genuinely cared either or considered me a friend or stood up for me, it was accepted as just one of those things and everyone moved on.


Fastforward 1 year later, the group server splinters off into 2 servers. I join the second one. However the old server owner who hated me was active in the 2nd one and hated me. Things got worse from here on out. 

I was bullied for reasons I didn't understand, be made to believe I was crazy or retarded for 0 reason. I was so gaslighted and manipulated that I had little tangible memory from which to make sense. Made to feel retarded or crazy when I'm really not. I don't want to bore you all with specifics, but it was pretty darn bad. They made me believe I was "gullible" , socially retarded and would play cruel elaborate jokes that don't really count for jokes. And when I tried to fight back, I was degraded even further, belittled, bullied, and banned. 

Long story short, I end up getting banned, then unbanned, then banned again.This is by the 2nd server owner who was good friends with the 1st one.  And this time I don't go back

----
Fast forward to now. I decide to talk to the first server owner who banned me for closure. After greeting him the first thing he says degradingly is "who are you?" deliberately, I brush it aside and get him to engage in a discussion about the past.

I told him about all the pain I felt, mental breakdowns, anxiety, fear. The gaslighting (not exaggerating with that word), manipulating, maliciousness. 

He replies 

I explain more in detail about how bad it was, how it didn't feel like jokes 

I acknowledged what he said. I asked him what he's feeling.

Later he said 

I then write a massive essay, detailing all he did as being beyond jokes. Detailing some important incidents, how they made me feel, what happened.  How it makes no sense for him to say he didn't dislike me, considering how malicious and cruel he was. And all the blatant insults and declarations he made of hating me. 

His response is the same 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
My problem is this. I built up this entire emotional thing in my mind, but I can't get this guy to be self aware of the injustice. It feels flat, a dead end and I don't know what to do with all this energy and annoyance. He gives a limp response, barely anything. It's like talking to a brick wall. I can't make him conscious of what he did. I asked and explained things multiple times, each time I got a stonewall response of "it was just jokes"

And so I don't know what to do with the emotions surfacing. Whether I continue the conversation, how or why or what. I'll ask him explicitly if he can admit to gaslighting or maliciousness. But I've already asked this multiple times, and each time it's a stonewall.


And so I don't know what to do. How to proceed, to continue the conversation, end it, what. I see the duality even more between suppression (holding things in)  and expression (blindly believing your mental stories), how neither is transcendence. But I'm stuck nonetheless, dithering in what to do or how to handle. Any advice? 


Let it be mentioned since it doesn't come across in the tone of this post, but I'm overwhelmingly glad I did/(am doing) this. I can feel the cleansing, positive emotions despite lots of overwhelming negative ones coming up.

First of all I want to say good on you for the willingness to face a person you felt like hurt you and confront him.  Sounds like you were in a lot of pain and confusion over this and wanted an apology.  To be honest the one you got is more then you'll get in life sometimes.  That said, he may be telling the truth from his point of view.  He and the guys may of just been joking around and may of done similar things to one another but no one felt as hurt about the type of joking and shit as you were.  This doesn't mean its your problem and you shouldn't of felt that way, it just lets you know what kind of things you do and dont like and in the future you can speak up for yourself sooner and leave a situation more clean sooner because you know who you are and what you find enjoyable and funny.  This is a part of growing up.

My advice is to just accept the guys truth as he said it, not to blame him and expect him to see it exactly how you saw it and for him to apologize in the way you feel is needed for you to move on.  If you wait for other people to act the way you want before your willing to feel ok with things, you'll be in a lot of discomfort you don't have to.  You can let go of your pain and angry and blame when you want, you dont have to wait for someone else to give you permission (it may not be easy, and yes sometimes it helps for someone to hear, apologize and understand you, but this is not going to happen all the time and you either learn to let go or hold onto your pain)

[Raphael]

@lmfao Is it possible for you to share the essay?

[AnTe]

@lmfao i think you might be looking for validation from people like this which represent a part of you and your past. so it's not so much what people did or said to you that matters but how that made you feel and believe about yourself. so getting another person to admit something isn't actually going to prevent it from happening again with someone else. it's what we choose to allow based on what we show people (what we already believe about ourselves) which generates certain responses.

[Nthnl]

On 11/1/2020 at 2:06 AM, lmfao said:

I'll try and keep it brief. 20 year old male here. When I was 14/15, I found an online group of friends who'd play smash bros. I met them all on a public smash bros netplay website, but eventually everyone talked on a private discord server in 2016 (When im 16). 

I invested a lot of time into this online friendship group, I considered them good friends. I end up getting banned from the group out of the blue. Server owner decided to do it. I was essentially kicked out of a place I considered my home. I was kicked out by the people who I considered my friends, and that hurt. No one genuinely cared either or considered me a friend or stood up for me, it was accepted as just one of those things and everyone moved on.


Fastforward 1 year later, the group server splinters off into 2 servers. I join the second one. However the old server owner who hated me was active in the 2nd one and hated me. Things got worse from here on out. 

I was bullied for reasons I didn't understand, be made to believe I was crazy or retarded for 0 reason. I was so gaslighted and manipulated that I had little tangible memory from which to make sense. Made to feel retarded or crazy when I'm really not. I don't want to bore you all with specifics, but it was pretty darn bad. They made me believe I was "gullible" , socially retarded and would play cruel elaborate jokes that don't really count for jokes. And when I tried to fight back, I was degraded even further, belittled, bullied, and banned. 

Long story short, I end up getting banned, then unbanned, then banned again.This is by the 2nd server owner who was good friends with the 1st one.  And this time I don't go back

----
Fast forward to now. I decide to talk to the first server owner who banned me for closure. After greeting him the first thing he says degradingly is "who are you?" deliberately, I brush it aside and get him to engage in a discussion about the past.

I told him about all the pain I felt, mental breakdowns, anxiety, fear. The gaslighting (not exaggerating with that word), manipulating, maliciousness. 

He replies 

I explain more in detail about how bad it was, how it didn't feel like jokes 

I acknowledged what he said. I asked him what he's feeling.

Later he said 

I then write a massive essay, detailing all he did as being beyond jokes. Detailing some important incidents, how they made me feel, what happened.  How it makes no sense for him to say he didn't dislike me, considering how malicious and cruel he was. And all the blatant insults and declarations he made of hating me. 

His response is the same 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
My problem is this. I built up this entire emotional thing in my mind, but I can't get this guy to be self aware of the injustice. It feels flat, a dead end and I don't know what to do with all this energy and annoyance. He gives a limp response, barely anything. It's like talking to a brick wall. I can't make him conscious of what he did. I asked and explained things multiple times, each time I got a stonewall response of "it was just jokes"

And so I don't know what to do with the emotions surfacing. Whether I continue the conversation, how or why or what. I'll ask him explicitly if he can admit to gaslighting or maliciousness. But I've already asked this multiple times, and each time it's a stonewall.


And so I don't know what to do. How to proceed, to continue the conversation, end it, what. I see the duality even more between suppression (holding things in)  and expression (blindly believing your mental stories), how neither is transcendence. But I'm stuck nonetheless, dithering in what to do or how to handle. Any advice? 


Let it be mentioned since it doesn't come across in the tone of this post, but I'm overwhelmingly glad I did/(am doing) this. I can feel the cleansing, positive emotions despite lots of overwhelming negative ones coming up.

He simply doesn't feel hes done an injustice. You have to recognize everyone thinks differently, and views things differently. Just because you feel it was wrong doesn't mean he feels it was wrong. Just because it was wrong to you, doesn't mean it was wrong to him. Just let it go. There are quite literally billions of people in the world. Don't get caught up on a few you met online.

[Preety_India]

Private

Discord 

Server 

Abuse 

Escape - Log Out

 

 

Remember those words in that order. Problem Solved. 

 

[tsuki]

@lmfao Hey man, I'm very sorry that you went through this alone and that you are still experiencing the the consequences. I think that it is admirable that you are fighting for your well-being and are willing to confront the pain head-on. I am also very glad to read that you are clear about the fact that you have not done anything to deserve such treatment. It was bullying and these people deserve to be despised.

It is apparent to me that you did heal from these incidents to some degree, but there is still work to do to free yourself from it. Having been through a similar process relating to anger, I will tell you that freedom is possible and that life will be better if you chip away at it. As already been said, expressing the anger is very helpful. Bullies have the purpose of making you angry and punishing you for feeling this way. It is natural for victims of bullying to shut anger away, or transform it into hate. Looking deeply into the nature of anger and why it's an absolutely crucial emotion for happiness will be helpful. It is not possible to truly love yourself and know your worth if you are disconnected from anger. The difference between anger and hate is that anger is about you being hurt and wanting to protect yourself, while hate is about the other person. Anger is how you communicate to yourself what is not okay to do with you. It is similar to fear in this regard, but fear makes you retreat, while anger is active and presses you to take action. Expressing anger has many forms, but you can research physical exercises that are designed for this purpose. TRE method, or things invented by Lowen come to mind.

What is also important is to not take the bullies' lack of apology as a sign of something being wrong with you. You are capable of having closure without his permission. Closure in this situation comes from understanding. From understanding the circumstances that led you to keep playing on these servers despite being repeatedly hurt (IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT! YOU WERE A CHILD!) and understanding why people bully. Psychotherapy may be helpful. When it comes to bullies themselves, they are deeply disturbed (even more so than their victims become). All they know is hate. This makes connection impossible. That is why he genuinely can't tell the difference between jokes and cruelty. He can't joke because he has nobody to joke with. He is not targeting you, specifically. A lot of people in his life are like you and he is creating bullies left and right by intimidation and making example of someone they pick. The other players at that server were most likely motivated by fear of the admin, not with hate of their own. It's horrible and nobody deserves this kind of treatment. He didn't even consciously choose you as a victim. It just happened for him. That is why he can't properly hear your heartfelt message. It was never about you for them.

I wish you the most happiness you can get because you are worth it and you are a better person now than he will ever become.

[DIDego]

@lmfao

You have +1700 posts in this forum, you spending a lot of time here and are relative young, probably learning and thrives in areas many people never going to be aware of or able care about during their entirely life's.

Might you outgrown this gamer chapter in your life and seeking after something in this group that not possible to find for your well being, and you now struggling to accept the group dynamics that actually exist everywhere and sometimes it get's into a impossible situation.

From what you show in the conversation with server owner, you have got an excuse that matters compared to got no respons at all.

 

Hopefully you also got experience that you can see now or afterwards that are wonderful or very important and that are these moments which matters in the end.

 

 

 

 

Edited November 4, 2020 by DIDego

[seeking_brilliance]

Lol what a doushe.  Doesn't deserve another thought.  I love smash bros though! 

Actually yes, he deserves another thought. He needs to be forgiven. 

And then forgotten. 

 

[Jacob Morres]

Sorry to hear man, I understand the pain

[bejapuskas]

@lmfao  I don't know if you still believe this ideology of like some 'server owner' or a 'clan leader' in a game being somehow superior, powerful, authority. Many of these people are in a seriously bad condition in life, they are addicted to drugs, having a hard family situation, mental illness etc... Just surround yourself with different people I guess, I don't think these people can be helped, people have tried...

[mandyjw]

The biggest trauma I had in my life was falling head over heels for a boy who had heavily flirted with me, and I was absolutely NOT supposed to be even considering because of some dramatic family stuff that happened before we were even born. I had a private conversation with him where we talked about the family stuff, I admitted my feelings and he told me he didn't give a rat's ass about me. A couple years later, he became coworkers with my sister and she mentioned that we went to school together. He said he didn't even remember me. I just could not make sense of this. 

This was nothing I even attempted to work through or thought to work through, although I couldn't stop dreaming about him. During an awakening however, it all bubbled up and I saw love in the complete disregard of it. I wanted him to see me. I wanted to heal our family stuff through a relationship. And in a way, he gave me the greatest gift and freedom in saying, it's all forgiven, forgotten and no one cares. And in the awakening I felt the love in that. 

I tried to make love and healing happen myself, when they were in fact, already the case. 

Well holy fuck, after writing this, even I've never told it quite like that before, or seen it in quite that light before. Jesus Christ, can't I just help someone else without also helping myself? Life is for-giving for no one I guess. 

 

Edited November 9, 2020 by mandyjw

[Value]

Thank you for sharing this experience. We all need to go through some tough things in life and I can understand the trauma in this case. Use it to grow, find better friendships, work on your life purpose, find new places to hang and learn things. You're welcome here<3

[Sri Ramana Maharshi]

On 11/2/2020 at 10:22 AM, Mu_ said:

First of all I want to say good on you for the willingness to face a person you felt like hurt you and confront him.  Sounds like you were in a lot of pain and confusion over this and wanted an apology.  To be honest the one you got is more then you'll get in life sometimes.  That said, he may be telling the truth from his point of view.  He and the guys may of just been joking around and may of done similar things to one another but no one felt as hurt about the type of joking and shit as you were.  This doesn't mean its your problem and you shouldn't of felt that way, it just lets you know what kind of things you do and dont like and in the future you can speak up for yourself sooner and leave a situation more clean sooner because you know who you are and what you find enjoyable and funny.  This is a part of growing up.

My advice is to just accept the guys truth as he said it, not to blame him and expect him to see it exactly how you saw it and for him to apologize in the way you feel is needed for you to move on.  If you wait for other people to act the way you want before your willing to feel ok with things, you'll be in a lot of discomfort you don't have to.  You can let go of your pain and angry and blame when you want, you dont have to wait for someone else to give you permission (it may not be easy, and yes sometimes it helps for someone to hear, apologize and understand you, but this is not going to happen all the time and you either learn to let go or hold onto your pain)

This is good advice. I’ve been bullied all my life, as I’ve almost always worn my heart on my sleeve and been openly vulnerable to hierarchical social structures. I’ve been kicked off of forums, bullied, banned. 
 

yet, this seems to be rather tricky and possibly features of the social tendencies of Homo sapiens. Question is...if authentic democracy (representation) ever broke through, would the “strong” still compete to dominate the weak? Who knows? Let’s try giving up violence and power first and see.

 

Right now I see a lot of bitterness in this nearly 50 year sense of form... ...and I am amazed at its tenacity despite it being transparent nature. ...and of course it started in school and underneath an exterior of charisma I fell into the rabbit hole of victimcintricity.

 

I don’t feel like this is the heart reply I wanted....Tsuki had some good stuff. Remember that there are no “Toxic People” only toxic actions. 
 

there is a new trendy thing where you can Objectify someone and it’s perfectly ok with modern culture if you say they are toxic. 
 

 

[lmfao]

On 02/11/2020 at 3:57 PM, Raphael said:

@lmfao Is it possible for you to share the essay?

@Raphael I would have posted it, but it would not make much sense to someone who wasn't there or to someone who doesn't know the people involved.

On 02/11/2020 at 10:32 PM, AnTe said:

@lmfao i think you might be looking for validation from people like this which represent a part of you and your past. so it's not so much what people did or said to you that matters but how that made you feel and believe about yourself. so getting another person to admit something isn't actually going to prevent it from happening again with someone else. it's what we choose to allow based on what we show people (what we already believe about ourselves) which generates certain responses.

Yeah
 

[lmfao]

@tsuki Yeah, the distinction you made between anger and hate there was a good one. Anger can be about honesty/accuracy with yourself about feeling vulnerable and hurt. Hate often involving self denial about why you feel the way you do. 

Lol, my thigh was twitching a lot whilst writing that. 

On 03/11/2020 at 5:35 PM, tsuki said:

 

What is also important is to not take the bullies' lack of apology as a sign of something being wrong with you. You are capable of having closure without his permission. Closure in this situation comes from understanding. From understanding the circumstances that led you to keep playing on these servers despite being repeatedly hurt (IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT! YOU WERE A CHILD!) and understanding why people bully. Psychotherapy may be helpful. When it comes to bullies themselves, they are deeply disturbed (even more so than their victims become). All they know is hate. This makes connection impossible. That is why he genuinely can't tell the difference between jokes and cruelty. He can't joke because he has nobody to joke with. He is not targeting you, specifically. A lot of people in his life are like you and he is creating bullies left and right by intimidation and making example of someone they pick. The other players at that server were most likely motivated by fear of the admin, not with hate of their own. It's horrible and nobody deserves this kind of treatment. He didn't even consciously choose you as a victim. It just happened for him. That is why he can't properly hear your heartfelt message. It was never about you for them.

I wish you the most happiness you can get because you are worth it and you are a better person now than he will ever become.

Right, I can still get closure. 

Edited December 5, 2020 by lmfao