In the beginning they seem very nice and ''normal''. I tell people the potential signs of an abuser, so they will figure this out, before they get involved with them...Being very charming and attentive at first. They say want they know you want to hear...and lavious gifts and attention on you..They push for the relationship too fast. Either it's sex, or moving into together. They protray themselves as a ''victim'', They need someone to take care of them, and they have been ''wronged'' by all the other relationships they ever had. Abusers never do anything wrong, they never claim responsibility for anything they do. If a male, he tells you he hates his mother, that's a sign as well. If he hates his mother, chances are he hates all women..He or she does not have a job...or a place to live, or transportation...and they have excuses as to why this is...Pay attention to how this person talks about the opposite sex. And, how they treat waiters, waitress, and others as well.In men, one of the signs is reckless driving, trying to scare you, and think it's funny...Both male and female abusers tell their victims they are too ''sensitive'' when they call you foul names.....There are other signs of a person who could be an abuser as well...And, if you feel uncomfortable in their actions..,or there is something scary about their behavior....trust your instints. If you think something is wrong....it is. I want to warn people about potential abusers, what the signs are before they get involved with him or her. I really have just touched on this subject...but, I think this is a good start....Knowledge is power...

It's always good to exercise caution with someone who likes you intensely and immediately for no apparent reason. They either likely have a severe personality disorder that will shortly come out in the form of an abusive relationship with you, or they are trying to scam you. Real, genuinely healthy relationships take time to establish and don't happen on the spot.

AngelGrace55, you are absolutely right. Abusers may tend to blame others for their actions, particularly their victims and bystanders who were in no way involved.

I was my parents' whipping boy. Anything wrong in the world . . . blame it on the child and then punish the child . . . no matter that the child could not possibly have had anything to do with what happened or have had any control over it in any way.

Scapegoating. The practice of singling out any party for unmerited negative treatment. The origins of the word are: A goat sent into the wilderness after the Jewish chief priest had symbolically laid the sins of the people upon it (Leviticus, chapter 16). Synonyms: fall guy, whipping boy.

Here's one we don't like to recognize while we're busy making excuses for our abusers...cruelty.

Thinking back on it, I remember now that my parents and my sister enjoyed being cruel to me, how they got a kick out of it. Another clue is the way they treat animals..."showing them who's boss", beatings, unnecessary confinement of an animal, etc. Studies have shown that people who hurt animals will very often escalate to hurting children or their partners.

Thanks for your participation in our topic, RichieD. You have added something quite important.

most people don't understand anything about abusers. i have told this to my therapist many times and people seem to believe an abuser (liar, manipuative, control freak, narcissus, sociopath, basket case, etc). i dont understand why people would rather believe the abuser anyway as many times as the mental health experts have pointed their abusive ways, it is like people seem to run to them for their "wonderful charm and attentiveness to you."

i told my therapist many times that is what i despise from people that i am still being blamed for the parents i have and they put them up as a saint while i am some blacksheep and i get called a liar all the time dont see why i'd be lying anyway. my parents dont see anything they have done to us was wrong that we should be "grateful" for everything (lack thereof) they have provided for us (again lack thereof) that we have the best parents in the world (oh really?).

my parents were mean to animals and i have gotten that trait from them wasnt as bad as they were. i was mean because of the hostile environment i was in and mistreated my pets which i still hurt from doing that today (this was in the 90s when i was a kid when this happen). i told myself years ago i dont want to hurt any animal ever again.

but what are you to do now still at home? im now 27 still miserable in this prison.

Ladytiger, sometimes I have wondered why people take the side of an abusive person over the victim of the abusive person. It is just incomprehensible to me. But then again, how else could abusers get away with what they do if other people didn't allow them to do it? Maybe if we had tighter inter-generational ties in our society, abusers would be accountable to their relatives and abuse would be less prevalent.

I think this discussion topic will be helpful for me in self-examination to be sure that I didn't pick up any of the traits of my abusive parents. I don't want to be an abusive person myself. I would consider myself a failure as a human being if I were to be abusive toward anyone myself.

The precise words don't come to mind right now, but I am thinking of another trait of abusers. They often will put more responsibility on a child than a child should have. For example, at age 11, I was given the responsibility of caring for a flock of 60 chickens that one of my sisters decided she didn't want anymore because it had been a 4-H Club project, and she was more interested in her ponies, rabbits, sheep, pigeons, and other animals. For me, a starved, abused, neglected child at the time, it was just too much responsibility to feed and water and clean up after the chickens. And collect the eggs and see to the setting hens and maintain the chicken coup and keep the neighborhood stray dogs from attacking and killing the chickens, and so on. It was just too much for me.

I remember this from my childhood, being treated like I was a miniature adult.

Children do crazy and foolish things, they're irresponsible sometimes, they make a lot of mistakes. That's because they're children, it's part of growing up and learning. It's the job of parents to protect them from their own foolishness and ineptness, not blame them for everything and try to shame them for ever being less than some absurdly high standard of behavior and accomplishment.

This involves the concept of conditional vs. unconditional love. I always had to adhere to adult standards of responsibility and behavior, I wasn't allowed excuses just because I was only a child. If I failed to "measure up", I wasn't punished...I was rejected and shamed...and "frozen out" of things. And I was caught up in role reversal...my alcoholic mother turned to me for help and enabling...keeping her drinking secret, doing her household chores for her...protecting her from my father.

Now as an adult I can't forgive myself for my mistakes. I have to be perfect, better than anyone else...at all times. And, irrationally, I expect people will love me if I somehow manage to live according to an exceptionally high standard. I feel like I'm responsible somehow if anything goes wrong with friends, neighbors, etc. I worry about the tortoises and raccoons that live in my neighborhood, the neighbors' dogs... and I want to protect them. If anyone comes to me with a hard luck story, I tend to fall into their trap and get entangled in their chaotic lives.

Sometimes I wish I could just ease up and live my own life...an imperfect life...and be satisfied with it.

"Ladytiger, sometimes I have wondered why people take the side of an abusive person over the victim of the abusive person. It is just incomprehensible to me. But then again, how else could abusers get away with what they do if other people didn't allow them to do it? Maybe if we had tighter inter-generational ties in our society, abusers would be accountable to their relatives and abuse would be less prevalent."

oooh dont i agree! how many times you see on tv where an abuser gets a slap on the wrist for what he/she did and was walking around free? i read in an article that happen where a grandmother was trying to get full custody of her grandkids since her daughter and the daughter's bf are meth addicts. family court said the grandmother was just a grandmother not mom so she shouldnt complain!

the grandmother said how the court ordered "supervised visits" for the daughter and her family while the grandmother has no visitation rights. the grandma is outrage how the courts could allow someone to supervise her daughter and her bf while being high on meth how is that helping the children? she was in rage and was gonna find another way to get the grandkids away from them.

what you said is what i told my bf and therapist, why are victims always the one who suffers and blamed for it? the prob is not many families wanna recognize abuse and dont care wanna live in fantasy land pretending it doesnt happen. when u point out to people how abusers get away with shit and nobody pays attention to it in society, look out! nobody wants to hear that part! lmao i hear so many excuses they wanna make for them and i say hell no to that!

yep, ive had ppl make excuses for my parents and the sad/scary part of it is these people were parents themselves! they claimed they fix themselves up and r living a good life but why r u saying my parents are a saint? she said my parents werent great so yea i mean this woman said it so damn casual yet cant understand why her marriage was falling apart!!

"I remember this from my childhood, being treated like I was a miniature adult.

Children do crazy and foolish things, they're irresponsible sometimes, they make a lot of mistakes. That's because they're children, it's part of growing up and learning. It's the job of parents to protect them from their own foolishness and ineptness, not blame them for everything and try to shame them for ever being less than some absurdly high standard of behavior and accomplishment."

oooh yea same with me a mini adult growing up. ppl seem to think i had a normal childhood at age 10 no i didnt i felt like a mini adult. everybody's lives is not leave it to beaver i blame those shows for putting on such a false ideology of life!

my parents put so much shame on us growing up and if we made a mistake, we never heard the end of it. my mom would scream like some banshee shaming you for making a simple mistake or harmless one for that matter and still does to this day. my mom called us names growing up still do mostly towards her daughters while my brother is golden but nothing like our parents. i always had to adhere to being perfect then my mom said nobody is perfect yet she is the one you need to do this or that like your brother learn it all within a month and be ready for that job!!

i failed a lot in my life my parents have a way of making you feel so small and at the end of the day u just wanna kill yourself. my mom is so codependent it is not even funny as my parents are both codependent. they hate each other, made kids they didnt want, etc yet ppl blame me for the parents i have....

They say misery loves company, but I don't believe it. I felt so sad reading your description of your childhood, Ladytiger, so similar to my own. I know how much it hurts, and how very difficult it is to build a life with all this emotional baggage weighing us down.

I'm truly sorry that you or anyone else had to go through the the kind of pain we've endured. All we ever wanted was to be ourselves and be happy.

i still talk about this to my therapist and was attending a workshop at the women's center on abuse. the women's center has helped and would like to take some more workshops through them whenever i get the chance

Hypercritical. I remember that my mother picked away at everything about me all the way back to my earliest years of childhood right up to the day I escaped from her. She told me that I was stupid, ugly, slow, that I would never amount to anything, that I was her little retarded son, that I should have been an abortion, . . . and then I went to school, where the other kids picked on me because I was a redhead and belonged to a different race. It really felt like everyone hated me, and indeed, their words were the words that people who hated me would have used, so maybe my feeling was right, and everyone did hate me. Is it wrong for me to finally feel some freedom from oppression now that my mother is dead?

I'm getting older now, Beaumont...the people who abused me in my life are disappearing from this world through death and dementia. And it's true, I feel more free now that they're gone. I don't rejoice in their demise, far from it...I grieve for them.

But I also feel free. That's not wrong, no need for guilt. It's the way of things, oppression doesn't always last forever. I'm sure there are millions of abused children in this world who felt this way when their parents and siblings lost their grip on them during their adult lives.

After my father died, I had a moment I'll never forget...the day I poured all his liquor down the kitchen sink. I really enjoyed that.

Thanks for your kind words, RichieD.