**Other CWs: mentions of sexual assault and abuse.**

Hello there.

This is something I have always been struggling with a lot. This thought pattern kept me in the two abusive relationships I used to be in and to this day it puts me in difficult situations regarding the way I let people treat me and myself reacting to it.  
It makes it impossible for me to create a feeling of self-worth, because it prevents me from acknowledging that it is not okay when people hurt me - ranging from the rape and mental abuse I experienced during said relationships to small things uttered in conversations with friends.

*"I can't blame them."*

The whole concept in my head is based on the simple fact that people were born and raised in different environments, with different  levels of intelligence and mental capacities and all their actions and reactions are based on that.  
^(A person born into and raised by a normal family who is healthily intelligent and had nothing wildly disturbing happen to them will act different than someone born to drug addicts who was neglected, not properly educated and molested by their uncle. Childhood is the most defining period of life, and no one chooses what happens to them during it and how does it affect their brain.)  
And from there stems my issue - because *how* could I blame a person whose mind unwillingly consists of ill, wrong and pathological patterns they didn't choose, for doing something bad? Would I be able to do things differently if I was born into their situation, with their intelligence and their mental strength? It's easy for people to say that they would act differently with their background, their knowledge and their resulting mindset. It's too often that people condemn others and voice how much better they are without considering that not everyone had the *resources* to turn out that way.  
There is so much destructive and self-destructive behaviour people can't control. And not everyone has access to help.

Do I need to say that I have a strong syndrome of wanting to save the world at this point?  
Instead of wasting my time realizing that I should not be treated the way I was, I was trying to help people who were hurting me with getting over what they went through to make them act that way.

\_

I'm not saying that I want to get rid of a thought pattern that is to some degree compassionate and tries to take into account people's reasons for their actions before judging them. I would be nothing without it.

And all that being said, I can rationalize that despite the reasoning, the bad things people do are *wrong*. But all it does for me is throw me into a spiral of the aforementioned after which I probably end up crying over the way everything is just fucked up and there is no way to end these vicious circles of people hurting each other. 

And when I look at the bad things people did to me, the fact that I can't find it in myself to *blame* them makes me feel like nothing. I can't get angry for myself. I am unable to. Aside from presumably needing to be able to blame a person to get angry at them, I was also drilled into believing that if something bad happens to me, I definitely must have done something to deserve it.  
I have somehow worked my way through imagining myself as other people to being able to partially acknowledge that I do not deserve bad things happening to me because no one else does, either. However, that's as far as I can go. I did not deserve it. Fine.  
But can I blame them for doing it? No. Apparently not. So it's probably okay.  
If it is okay to rape and abuse me, what am I worth?

  
*Does anyone have experience with this?*