Understanding Vulnerability to Abuse

Graph credit: www.utahcounty.org

"From the target’s point of view, the relationship becomes a vicious circle of bonding, anxiety, fear, relief, sex and further bonding. The longer it goes on, the harder it is for the target to escape." ~ Donna Anderson

If you've ever questioned why abusive relationships are harder to get over than healthy ones, then Donna Anderson's latest article "Getting Over that Amazing 'Chemistry'" may offer some insightful consolation. Since everyone's situation differs, not all the arguments she expresses need apply.

Dear Donna,

I'm aware my experience differs vastly from yours.  Although I can relate in principle to your life story, I didn't have to deal with an extreme sociopath as you did, but rather a subtle and covert abuser. To be honest, I don't know which of the two is more baffling. My ex-partner seemed decent, caring and committed on the outside, but underneath she was self-absorbed, suspicious, hypervigilant, exploitative and hostile. This discrepancy led me on my journaling journey to make sense of this sweetness/cruelty remix or else go insane. This crazy-making dynamic is aptly depicted above in the visual graphic -- as you know... what counsellors call, "Cycles of Abuse".

The Article:

What resonated with me was your accurate description of traumatic childhood experiences as a way of priming the target so that abuse feels normal. You refer to this fatal dynamic as traumatic bonding. You also mention love-bombing tactics that abusers use so that when a target is favored, the sun shines, but when he or she falls out of grace, the Ice Age begins.

These cycles of abuse often pushed me into a tormenting role similar to Shakespeare’s Hamlet [minus the sublime poetry, royal intrigue, strewn corpses and tragic bloody ending]. After each “Explosion” I’d put on an antic disposition for days not wanting to eat nor take care of myself. I breathed a peculiar kind of calm because I didn't have to walk on eggshells as I usually did. I’d go for long walks alone; I'd interact with strangers on the street; I’d get a small suitcase and carefully pack some clothes, important documents and other essentials, as if to prepare for a quick getaway; I'd sit near my daughter's bed at night and cry as if to mourne that symbolic exile...

Getting back to the article, you leave your readers with some helpful homework: You finish by saying that healing and restoration involve exploring the root of our past and how that background may be connected in making us vulnerable to abusive relationships. This is painstaking work, especially if fear, obligation and guilt [FOG] are clouding our vision.  As the Christian theologian and philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard asserted: “[T]he truth is not so quick on its feet.” -- meaning if we want to reach out for truth, we need to work at it diligently, unashamedly and tenaciously.

Thanks Donna for your life commitment to helping others,
~ Reflector

Jotting Notes of Wisdom

As I'm reading comments from Lovefraud Blog, I wanted to jot down some important points that LF members are making so I would'nt have to back track later on. So, here they are in living color:

On Forgiveness
"...there can come a time when we realize our suffering has been our healing in a strange sort of way, for it has been the basis for re-centering and reforming a self that would have been less without it." EyeoftheStorm

"I not only wanted to heal myself from the damage of this relationship. I intended to accomplish a deep character transformation that would change the way I lived."
Kathleen Hawk

"I understand that pain of loneliness. But I also know that the loneliest place I’ve ever been was when I was “with” someone who I knew was not really present. I now know that I married a sociopath when I was 18, and stayed married for 6 years. I didn’t have a name for his control, jealousy, lack of love, lies, etc., etc. But I know that late in the marriage I got to a point where I couldn’t sleep without having one foot hanging out of the bed and touching the floor. (One foot on the floor, one foot out the door?) I would have unbidden thoughts of getting a room somewhere, anywhere, where I could just be alone — knowing that I would be less lonely in that room than in my marriage." Rune

“It is very difficult to accept the fact that there are no guarantees in life, no guarantees that life will progress as it should or that the people you care about will love you back, or even that they will treat you right. But trust in life does not mean trusting that life will always be good or that it will be free of grief and pain. It means that somewhere inside yourself you can find the strength to go forth and meet what comes and, even if you meet betrayal and disappointment along the way, go forth again the very next day.” Merle Shain

"I’d rather be alone than wish I were!" EyeoftheStorm

"I want to learn more about myself and strengthen my boundaries. I never want to tolerate disrespect again from a man. I want to act at the first sign instead of excusing it, being blind to it, believing lies that don’t make sense and then reacting to cruelty." Morgan

"...turn off the words in your mind. Feel the feelings, but turn off the word machine." KH

"Neuroscience indicates that anxiety and busy words exist in the same brainwave frequencies. Curiously, when we pray with words we can also continue to tie ourselves to those faster frequencies, but when we just drop into the experience, the feeling, and let go of the words, we are dropping into the slower frequencies where our nourishing intuition can reach us." Rune

"One way of describing trauma is that it is an unexpected breach of the rules we took for granted." Kathleen Hawk

"Forgiving is about trust at two levels. First, trust that certain bad things will happen. We can look at this statistically, if we’re inclined. A certain fraction of people we meet will be destructive emotional cripples. A certain fraction of things we buy will turn out to be unusable junk. A certain number of conversations with our relatives will include uninvited comments about our choices, our characters or our weight. Trusting that these things will happen eliminates the surprise factor and enables us to plan around these statistical likelihoods." Kathleen Hawk

On Trust

"I always felt that he was so much better than me because that was the unspoken feeling he always left me with." Housie

"I always felt that he was so much better than me because that was the unspoken feeling he always left me with." Betty

"I want a life that isn’t dragging me down with possessions and relationships that are not worth the time it costs to maintain them.”
K H

,”My children and I have the perfect give and take relationship, I give, and they take.” -- geminigirl

"You can do these two a favor by stopping all rewards for bad behavior. If they want anything from you, they can earn it." KH

"He took up residence in my brain and I am still wondering if I will ever be able to fully “evict” him." distraught

"And why? Because there was too much not to love about myself. Occasionally, somewhere between a second and third glass of wine, I was comfortable with myself. But in the sober light of day, evaluating both the interior of my mind and the evidence of my life, I could write long lists of where I fell short. I didn’t even know what loving myself would feel like But as a start, it would help if I weren’t so anxious all the time. If the anxiety didn’t make me so disorganized. If I could actually plan something and follow without getting distracted with worrying about whether I was going to get distracted and follow through. Sigh." KH

"My family are emotionally distant: do as they say, and I am (briefly) loved and accepted; disagree, and I am treated with coldness or entirely ignored. I don’t treat myself like that any longer — and what a shock it was to discover that I was being emotionally distant from myself by waiting for others to fulfill my emotional needs and not looking after them myself. The task and privilege of providing myself with acceptance and love, of becoming my own best friend, was always mine. I still frequently feel an almost overwhelming sense of loneliness, but I now choose my own company over abusive treatment." Betty

My stbx was emotionally distant: do as she said, and I'd be (briefly) loved and accepted; disagree, and I'd be treated with coldness or entirely ignored. What a shock it was to discover that I was being emotionally distant from myself by waiting for others to fulfill my emotional needs and not looking after them myself. The task and privilege of providing myself with acceptance and love, of becoming my own best friend, was always mine. I still frequently feel an almost overwhelming sense of loneliness, but I now choose my own company over abusive treatment.

"Maybe after we work on emotional freedom (not feeling responsible for other people’s feelings), we have to re-learn how to be a social person again." KH

it wasn’t so long ago that I couldn’t list my preferences, cause even my likes were catered to pleasing others first. Not any longer. betty


"And perhaps, it might be a good idea for you to think about what this distribution of labor has done to you. While everyone else’s is clanking around with their stiff upper lips, with emotional spectrums basically limited to feeling superior, feeling angry, laughing at other people, feeling aggrieved, taking care of themselves, you’re the one who’s feeling the rest of it — the empathy, the sorrow, the feelings of helplessness, the concern and wish to help. And you’re feeling it alone in this family, and trying to hold up the “right” of it, while everyone else denies these feelings exist. Labeling you in ways that reinforce the whole dichotomy, and that give you little opportunity to exercise their side of the spectrum... It sounds like this family has trained you to be soft and giving without thinking of yourself." HK

"I can’t ever understand why in the midst of these relationships, I don’t just stop and tell the person that I can’t DO whatever they are asking or that I am not happy in the situation as it is!! As pointed out in this article-working on my emotional independence must be the answer." sabrina

"I somehow convinced myself that as long as the peace was kept, my needs didn’t matter." SStiles

it sounds like you and I have similar backgrounds of taking on “project relationships” with people who are depressed, needy or manipulative. We think we can fix them and then we find ourselves slogging in the same swamp. Other than just “no,” my favorite boundary setting phrase is “that doesn’t work for me.” Before I knew about needs, it was just another form of “no.” Now I can add “I need this to be more fair to me, and here’s what would work for me... The thing about confrontation — the thing I think we’re so afraid of — is that it can be a power struggle, if we’re dealing with people who are heavily invested in having the power... It can feel like putting ourselves first if we’re dealing with people who don’t want us to put ourselves anywhere at all, except at their service...As I said, it can create some tension with people who, for whatever reason have problems with other people’s assertion of power over their own lives, but this is the way we graduate from being doormats to people who are respected and whose contributions bring good back to us. These are our lives. We are responsible for them. And if we don’t act like we care about what happens to us, we are showing people how we expect to be treated...Finally, if acting as though our needs are as important as anyone else’s draws personal attacks or any kind of violence or abuse toward us, it is a clear message that we are not in a safe place. There are a lot of levels of “safety.”...If we are clear in this way with our mothers, and they say, “Well, you always were the selfish one,” this is a personal attack. Arguing with this sort of thing is a form of condoning it. It makes more sense to point it out as a personal attack, and say that we are willing to discuss what she wants and needs, if she wants to share that information, but unless she can keep her unsolicited opinions to herself, this conversation is over...In verbally or emotionally abusive relationships, they will draw whatever techniques the other person uses to keep us submissive. The point here is not to endanger ourselves. We don’t need to fight with people we already know are invested in separating us from our legitimate needs.
What emotional freedom can do for us — and even toying with the idea privately in our minds without saying anything about it — is clarify what’s really going on here. That it is impossible for us to be whole human beings in this environment, and to motivate us to get out of it... These people are about nothing but their overblown needs masking their empty centers... This is only my opinion, and I think it requires a certain temperament or possibly a level of healing — I’m not sure which — to view environmental clean-up as part of our life work. We start by keeping them out of our lives. But an extension of that is making life difficult for cruising sharks... understand why this is so hard to do. It changes our relationship to them. Instead of being “perfect” and unselfishly committed to their needs, it makes us separate human beings with our own ideas, needs and wants. And this is something that I think we’ve been brutally trained not to show anyone else, if we’ve come from backgrounds of abuse. It takes tremendous courage to take that position, not least because we expect to be rejected or punished...But as a friend of mine, who is going through the difficult process of discovering that most of her existing friendships are not going to survive her personal growth, said to me yesterday, “I just can’t go back. I could have these relationships, if I were willing to be who I used to be. But I can’t go back.'”
KH

"It comes down to the fact that our actions (thru not standing up for ourselves) shows that we love the abuse more than we love ourselves. Very sad...This causes strife and conflict internally- we are upset and tend to blame ourselves that no one has spoke up for our needs, and are angry that we aren’t being courageous or strong enough to defend those needs. So in a way we are getting abused two- fold ,by our wishes being dismissed/ignored by the other person ,and our part of not attending to our needs or standing up for ourselves. " sabrina

Psychotherapy: Excerpts About the Games Abusers Play

As I read an article from Lovefraud.com, I couldn't help but identify with the following excerpts. The disordered person can be incredibly convincing to the untrained eye when it comes to "receiving therapy".

"And so... we have the illusion of a client who appears motivated to seek help and make a kind of sincere reckoning, but who, instead, uses therapy to manipulate her way out of the doghouse and restore the old leverage with which she’ll continue, sooner or later, to exploit in her customary style.

... we have sociopaths who play the-dedication-to-their-spiritual-development game. These are typically well-educated sociopaths with a polished psychological rap, who posture as committed spiritual seekers. Some of these sociopaths may go so far as to make a sort of cult—a seeming life mission—of their alleged spiritual development, raising irony and farce to new levels.

Summoning guises like Ms. Sensitive, Ms. Wounded, Ms. Relationship Builder, Ms. I’m-In-Touch-With Vulnerability, Ms. I’m-In-Recovery-From Co-Dependence, and countless other pseudo-evolved raps, these sociopaths can be magnets—and they know it—for genuinely vulnerable men seeking sensitive, emotionally available, vulnerable women with whom to partner in their own recovery."

-- Steve Becker