Physical & Emotional Abuse Support Group

Abuse is a general term for the treatment of someone that causes some kind of harm (to the abused person, to the abusers themselves, or to someone else) that is unlawful or wrongful. No one deserves abuse, period. Abuse can be emotional, physical, or sexual.

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jimmysquirrel 10/15/2007

Alright, i heard something interesting this past week... and i have mulled over it for a while... and i agree with it. It is, " we will not accept abuse from others that is greater than we abuse ourselves. As soon as that abuse gets greater than what we give ourselves, that is often when we draw the line and leave"
I got to thinking about it... and i think that there are some exceptions... but for the most part this rings very true to me.
Think about it. If a person calls themself stupid and chides themself at every percieved mistake... then what is the difference when someone else does it to them?
If someone hits you and you stay...why? It isn't out of love... love does not make a person do that. I have a theory...
There is an emotional pay-off when the abuser treats the abusee like shit.
You feel that you are scum... so when someone tells you that you are... it validates how you feel. For a person that feels worthless, having anything validated feels good.
And if you want to feel pain because you think you deserve it, when the person finally does hit you... it brings a relief almost.
I am still pondering this, and all aspects of it... but what does everyone else think? i would love to hear everyone's opinion on this.
james

queenvalerie 10/15/2007

I think you are out of your mind! ok..maybe not so much, but still. Relief? No not relief. Valadation maybe. There have been so many posts about which is worse, physical or mental. We talk about it like one is "abuse" and the other is "abuse-light". That is so not true. All abuse is mental and emotional. I was beat to within an inch of my life on more than one occasion. I was raped repeatedly over the course of years by the man who swore to love me. That is supremely mysoginistic and at it's core - it is emotional abuse. He was abusing not only my body, but my heart, my mind, my self esteem, my very sense of self.

All abuse is emotional, no matter how it manifests itself.

deleted_user 10/15/2007

We accept abuse because we have children - and it stops the abuser abusing them - and we have no money, no job and no where to go. We are stuck, but while the spot light is on us, we look after and protect our kids.

BUT BUT BUT what we do not realised, because we end up so stuck in the house, so stuck in the relationship and so stuck in illness and depression, anxiety and stress, is that there are ways out.

They lead you to poverty, one-room housing, shelters. But even that, is BETTER than living with an abuser. And it is a start. And the first step upwards.

deleted_user 10/15/2007

I think your theory can make sense to some people. I became USED to being treated this way- sadly, it was my comfort zone to be screamed at on the phone nightly. Im not sure it validated interior feelings, though.

I like that you're really trying to think this out. I don't think it's a stupid idea.. I just think some people have a hard time believing they are used to this behavior. We want to feel love and respected.

deleted_user 10/15/2007

I agree with what you are saying to an extent. Thinking back I guess you're right. It wasn't so much that it felt good to have him tell me I was the scum on his shoe, but it was believable because I already had that preconceived notion about myself. I could go on forever in response to you. I'm not sure how I feel about the relief factor however, because I'm not sure if it was the verbal/emotional abuse that led me to wanting physical pain or that I wanted the physical pain because I was tired of hurting myself.

But that's just my two cents.

jimmysquirrel 10/16/2007

well, relief might have been the wrong word. Or maybe not enough modifiers on it.. let's see... a somewhat sick and twiseted form of relief, not from pain, but from the emotional validation.
And... for further elaboration... this theory supports the idea of why an abuser works slowly, undermining a persons confidence in themselves... getting the abusee to treat themself worse than the abuser him/herself does.
Now, if one goes with this theory, then the abusee is twice-abused. both by the abuser, AND by themself.

And queenvalerie. i do want to say to you personally... i am sorry that the one you loved treated you this way. But thank you for replying to my post. To everyone who has, thank you.

deleted_user 10/16/2007

Unfortunately I don't agree with this simple, generalized theory.
I didn't deserve any of it period. He worked me into a mental place of incredibly low, low sense of self first.
He was a master manipulator. Once he got me where he could move onto his deeper agenda, he began to beat and verbally abuse me.
To escape this life, I had friends who helped me break-out of his spell and get brave enough to escape. Previous to this experience, I was a happy, outgoing educated woman making my life happen.

jimmysquirrel 10/16/2007

i agree with you. you did not deserve any of it. no one does. I am glad that you had good friends too. True friends like that are worth more than anyone can ever truly know.
And well, this is a theory... it makes sense to me... but if it doesn't to you, just remember this. That this is the theory of an alcoholic(me, sober though i might be), so it's value is not necessarily something that you need to put stock in.

queenvalerie 10/16/2007

I've been wondering about this ever since i posted a reply yesterday. I do not agree that it was relief i felt, ever. But i was trying to remember just what it was i did feel. Other than the humiliation and pain, of course. I wanted to love him and i wanted him to love me. That was what i clung to. That obsessive love that is an abusive relationship. That somehow, some way, something i did had made him mad and he was doing whatever it was he chose to do to me. Abusees are, at heart, people pleasers that take it WAAAAY to far. I always felt that there was something i wasn't doing, some way i wasn't being, that would make it stop. Maybe what i'm trying to say is...the physical abuse gave me a goal to reach. Of course there was never any way to reach it, it was a constantly moving target. I still think that the bulk of it was validation, but there was that one little grain of something else there too. I think it always gave me a new target. That if i would only stop doing "this" or start doing "that" then the abuse would stop. It was constantly just barely out of reach.

Does that make any sense at all to anyone but me?

jimmysquirrel 10/16/2007

That is somehting i didn't consider... the unfulfilled goal... so for some it isn't about the payoff, just the hope of a payoff, as misguided as that might be...
and, do you see what i was talking about the abusee talking to themself worse than the abuser did?
That is the whole part of this that is getting me, because i know that when dealing with my father, i put myself down worse, magnified my problems more and called myself worse things than he ever did. And well, when i was away from him during the summer (visiting my mom), and my stepdad and mom weren't calling me these things, and were basically acting as counselors and getting my self-esteem up... well, i stopped talking to myslef like that, and when my dad started his regular routine, i didn't stand for it anymore because i didn't talk to myself like that anymore...
as for the unreachable goal... i know what you mean. I felt that all i had to do was to have him love me. if he showed up at my school functions, f we did things together, if he EVER said he loved me, then i would feel worthy. I based my self esteem on his opinion of me. So... yeah, i understand that... and now i have more to ponder!

queenvalerie 10/16/2007

Yes i do understand and agree (!) with you about the self-talk. There wasn't anything my ex ever said to me that i hadn't already said to myself. Of course his language was much more graphic, but yes. The words coming out of his mouth were validation of my self-talk. It took what feels like forever to stop the voice in my head that was his, but once i did, i didn't tolerate it from anyone else.

this2willpass 10/16/2007

i think the emotional pay off you spoke about, is different from feeling good while being validated. the emotional pay off isnt neccesarily a "good" one, validation is (for me) about feeling normality and like you fit, it doesnt mean i hate it any less when it happens, it doesnt mean the emotional pay off i recieve from feeling like i deserve it is a good feeling.

although i do agree with you "we will not accept pain from others that is greater than that which we give ourselves" (ok i rephrased it), i think its true, if i continue to think i am worth nothing. i will in fact be worth nothing! i just think that its not neccesarily like you explained, people feel that way and stay in that situation for a lot of different reasons other than feeling "good"!

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