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.
All right, I'm sorry to bother you, but brain is overflowing. A very common response I am hearing when I reach out for help is 'you won't be a victim if you don't let yourself be one.'Which is certainly true - I don't want to define myself as a victim, I don't want to have a victim's attitude, which I recognize only opens myself up for more and various abuse.But at the same time, it feels so accusatory - like the abuse is my fault. My tendancy to assume blame? My fault. All I needed to do was endure 6 years of being assured everything was my fault without believing it. What could possibly be so hard about that? Same with my self-loathing, my confusion, my poor decision making, my lack of aspirations for the future. I don't know - it feels like my hip was shattered in a drive by accident two days ago, and people are accusing me of goldbricking because I'm not going to be competing in a triathalon this weekend. 'Aren't you healed YET? Geeze - if you hadn't been standing on the sidewalk right there, you would be able to do it, you know.'.
My DV councellor has repeatedly told me how amazed she is at my rapid progress. I just wish someone I've known for more than two months would cut me the same slack.
My DV councellor has repeatedly told me how amazed she is at my rapid progress. I just wish someone I've known for more than two months would cut me the same slack.
having expectations will only set us up for a fall - every time.
In some ways the comment you referred to about not being a victim unless you allow it (paraphrased) is true. One of my most favorite quotes is by Viktor Frankl:
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."
We cannot control what other people say, do or think. What we can do is consciously choose to be in that space to choose how we take, if we take at all, what others say, do or think. I won't lie, it takes awareness and practice, practice, practice. And then it takes more practice, lol. But it will work, if you practice.
What someone thinks about me is none of my business. That's a hard one to swallos because I was raised (as I think most of us were) to worry about what everyone else (but me) thought.
Who is more important, your friend who doesn't get it, or you? You who knows you're making progress?
The path we are on is a path of progress not perfection. One baby step in front of the other. Sometimes it will be a step back, but be assured that none of us ever go as far back as we were when we started this path. :-)
It feels like that's exactly the kind of slippery talk that constituted the abuse in the first place. I am not responsible for my abuse. i trusted and loved my wife. If I had kept my defenses up all this time, that would have been neither, although yes, i would not have been damaged nearly as much. I won't accept blame for trusting and loving the woman I promised to trust and protect, and who promised to love and respect me in return. The fault is hers, not mine.
these people are partially right - if you were to break up and have no contact with the abuser, the situation improves. But that doesn't solve the problem immediately, and part of the problem itself is the difficulty in leaving.
I find the leaving diffiuclt because 1) I usually have developed an emotional attachment to the abuser - I eventually see them as an ill person who needs help. 2) when in the midst of the abuse your choices appear limited and it feels like you need to make quick decisions, and you wind up choosing whatever gives you the most immediate relief to stop the abuse. Ending the relationship always seems like the more painful choice because you know just saying things are over will unleash a lot of anger from the abuser, and unleash a lot of emotions within yourself. So, I think we wind up staying because temporarily it seems like the relief is more immediate and puts off the idea of facing the inevitable.
My counselor says, "Instead of asking 'Why doesn't she just leave?' instead ask 'Why doesn't he just stop abusing her?' and put the responsibility where it belongs, on the abuser." (That might be a Lundy Bancroft quote, not sure).
Personally, I find the most useful tools to be positive ones rather than negative ones. My counselor has given me excellent tools to do this. Instead of thinking "Don't be a victim" (negative thinking) I've learned to think about what I want in life, and to trust my own judgement (positive thinking).
And totally agree about going into it as a loving relationship. Another gem from my counselor: "95% of my clients are trying to be good spouses and abuser exploit the SH!T out of that."
But more, she's trying. She's reading the book (slowly, and admits that she doesn't understand most of it). I took my wedding ring off, and I've told her I'll put it back on once she finishes the book - but tried to make it very clear that was an attempt at a positive encouragement, not a punishment. She admits that she has hurt me in the past. She has lately been listening to me, and not being judgemental. She's not being perfect, and still has a long way to go, but... I'm afraid of ending it with a woman I love when there may be hope she is changing.
I'm afraid of being a failure as a father and as a husband. Of losing more than I have already. Of being alone and unlovable.
Those don't seem like very irrational fears to me. But then, if they were, how would I ever know?
More importantly, though, the fear that you would be a "failure as a father and as a husband" is simply not the case. I had that very same fear (well ok, failure as a wife and mother in my case, obviously), along with the fear that I would be alone and unlovable. But all are false. They are false because there is no failure in walking away from something that the other person has caused to be toxic. The way I look at it, if you picked up a pan you believed cold but was in fact burning hot, would it be failure on your part, or just plain common sense, to put the thing straight down again?
If something is hurting you, with no reasonable prospect of that pain stopping, then there is absolutely no shame and no failure in walking away from it, even if that something be your marriage. In saying this, I'm not trying to make the call for you about what you should do, I'm not saying there is no prospect for you - those are decisions/judgments only you can make - I'm only trying to address a couple of the fears.
One other final comment is that, if you do choose to walk away then yes, at least for a time (though not necessarily forever), you will be alone. That doesn't make you unlovable. Should you come to the view that she doesn't/can't love you, that doesn't make you unlovable either. In my own case, I have been alone for some time now, and yet I feel more lovable than I ever did when I was married to someone whose opinion I valued too much, and who valued me far too little. I'm most certainly not unlovable just because a twisted abusive man didn't love me.
Post as often as you need. That's what we're here for.
I'm trying to break myself of the habit of shutting up about everything, but I've also run into instances where people - even my supports - aren't in a good place, and tag me on overexpressing, even annoying them. i try to keep it back, but they often won't tell me when they're getting annoyed until it's big annoyance. Which doesn't help when they let fly.
I recognize I'm needlessly defensive, and I'm trying to address it.