People often ask why someone would do something so devastating as what I’ve experienced. Why would a parent create a coercive, dangerous environment for their child? Why would someone keep a young person trapped and isolated, controlling every part of their life? Why would a licensed medical professional perform irreversible procedures without clear consent, and do it again and again? These aren’t mysteries if you’ve lived and studied them like I have.
I was harmed by people who were supposed to care for me. As a very young child, my father used his power to dominate and terrorize me through repeated violations. During my 15th year, an adult male held me in an abusive environment for a prolonged period, subjecting me to multiple forms of control, degradation, violence, and manipulation. And decades later, as an adult seeking medical help, a doctor permanently injured me by performing surgery without informed consent. He was in a position of trust. I was vulnerable, and he took advantage of that. No system or individual held any of them accountable except me.
Each of these people used their power not to help, but to regulate themselves through dominance. When they inflicted harm, they weren’t just “acting out.” They were chasing the feeling of being in charge, of not being helpless anymore. For a moment, they got to flip the script. They weren’t the ones scared or overwhelmed. They were the ones who got to control someone else’s body, reality, and fate. It was never care or connection, but their seeking relief through dissociation, escaping their internal pain by externalizing it onto me.
The brutal secret behind much interpersonal harm is that the abuser is trying to escape their own story by making someone else carry it. But it never works. That kind of dominance is a false fix. It creates more fragmentation, not less: more splitting, damage, and silence. The only thing it does is pay the pain forward.
I’ve suffered not only the physical and emotional damage, but also the total disorientation caused by institutional betrayal. The systems that were supposed to protect me didn’t. They denied, dismissed, ignored, and even protected the people who caused the harm.
But here’s where the cycle ends. I didn’t become like them, go silent, or disappear. What I’m doing now–telling the truth, educating others, fighting for accountability–is a repair and restoration of meaning, clarity, and agency. Unlike them, I’m not seeking to hurt anyone, but to protect others. I’m exposing patterns. I’m saying what needs to be said out loud so others can find language for the pain of their lived experience. This is the vital first step in making it stop.
