How to tell my family about abuse i suffered....

[miserables]

I wondered if anyone could give me any advice on how to break this news to my family. i have no idea how....or who to tell first

[downandout]

ok well i am not so sure on this one at all but i would say to follow your heart and head the person that you think will understand you and believe you the most, even if its a cousin or an aunt or uncle or a very close friend start with that person and then together go to the next person, its going to be hard and you have to ask yourself are you ready for them to turn around and fire 210 questions at you as they may believe you but want more information than you are ready to share yet, i had that case when i let something out to one of my sisters and the next minute my mum and my other sister had me trapped in a small room that i could not get out of and were firing questions at me and i was like what stop it stop it i felt that they were not believing me i ended up jumping out the window to get away from them and then would not tell them anything ever again as they dealt with it in a way that i could not accept.

Maybe i dont know i am sure there will be others here that have done it but i am just thinking about maybe if you wrote it down and then if they did start firing the questions you could perhaps say look i am sorry but this is real it did happen and i appreciate you want to know all the info but i am just at the start of telling you and its hard for me to talk about it so i really hope you understand but i have written it down for you to read in your own time but please all i ask is that you dont fire 200 questions at me I just need for you to understand that if affected me and this is why i am like i am now and i just want to get it out there, I dont care if we never discuss it again but i need to know that you now understand and that you still love me and I am sorry if i have hurt you at all by telling you all of this but its a problem that i have to live with day to day and it affects my life.

Another thing maybe if they start saying this is all lies you just want attention just calmly say no its not a lie, can i ask you a question if i told you i was gay would you still love me even if you did not understand why? well this is the same thing its something in my life but it does affect you

I hope that helps you I always found it so hard to speak to my family in fact i have not spoken to them now for oh my sisters and one brother since 1999 and my other brother since 2005, i did email them in 2009 but got such a nasty reply i never bothered really again as its always me that makes the effort but being honest its easy to forget about them when they are 12,000 miles away and well they were the ones that caused half of my issues xxx

Helen

[miserables]

thank you for your reply helen. i think my main worry is that they may not perceive what i went through as abuse as i was never actually physically touched. its so difficult as it is to do with an uncle and i know it will break the whole family apart

[Hidden]

Hi

I'm wondering whether you have talked to anyone else in detail about the abuse. It can often be easier to talk with a stranger such as a counsellor or therapist first and then when the abuse has been accepted and feelings settled down it is then easier to speak to family. Things are less heated at that point. Also you may find that once someone knows what happened and once you have moved through the feelings then you may only need to speak privately to anyone who might be at risk from the uncle as that is important and otherwise not need other members of the family to know, after all if it will not help anyone then what would be the motive. You may find that even if you do tell your family they may not thank you and you may find you have opened up a lot more pain for yourself and for no benefit. Obviously you need to be heard and understood and also he must be prevented from abusing anyone else, but they may be all that is necessary. I'm just giving you something to think about as disclosure is never as straightforward as it seems. I told about my uncle and what I said was denied totally.

Suex

[downandout]

Abuse is Abuse whether its mental or physical my ex husband put me through years of mental abuse, and when my siblings found out they just hated me and his family deny that he would ever do such a thing so yes i have to say if i was you i would go the route that secondhandrose suggested sorry i forgot about that option because i have to admit at the end of the day it was actually a CPN that listened to me and helped me get rid of it all and also i did two courses with domestic violence and the women i met in the groups were amazing it really helped me to heal, not everyone had been beaten up some had just been told constantly what a waste of space they were etc, so that is another option for you, you could try doing one of the courses that they do and see if it helped you at all, but yeah i should have thought maybe the stranger is the best one to start with xx