The Emotionally Abusive Relationship_How to Stop Being Abused and How to Stop Abusing

by Beverly Engel

  This chapter consists of the following eight-step program for those who are being emotionally abused:

  •Step One: Admit to yourself that you are being emotionally abused and acknowledge the damage you've experienced because of it.

  •Step Two: Understand why you chose an abusive partner.

  •Step Three: Understand why you have put up with the abuse.

  •Step Four: Understand your pattern and work on completing your unfinished business.

  •Step Five: Confront your partner on his or her abusive behavior.

  •Step Six: Pay attention to your feelings.

  •Step Seven: Take your power back by setting and enforcing your boundaries.

  •Step Eight: Continue to speak up.

  This program has been used successfully by many of my clients throughout the years. By following this program, many found that the incidence of abuse decreased or even ended. In those cases where abuse continued, the program helped my clients to gain the necessary strength and resolve to walk away from the relationship. The understanding they gained concerning the reasons why they chose an abusive partner also helped them to avoid future abusive relationships.

  Of course, most of my clients continued therapy, and this certainly helped them as well. I encourage those of you who can afford therapy to seek this outside help. You will benefit greatly from the insights and support you will receive. But for those of you who cannot afford therapy and who are willing to put a great deal of time and effort into understanding yourself and your patterns, I am confident you can experience many of the same results my clients have experienced.

  Many of the steps can be completed in a relatively short amount of time and offer immediate results. Others offer long-term solutions, meaning that it may take months and even years to complete them. Both the long-term and short-term steps are necessary if you are going to stop the emotional abuse that is destroying your self-esteem, your sense of self, and your relationship.

  For the most part, I recommend that you follow this program as it is presented and that you complete each step before going on to the next. You'll find that while some steps are rather difficult, the strength and insights you gain from having worked on a previous step will make each subsequent step a little easier. There will be several times, however, when you can move on to the next step without having fully completed a previous one. For example, Step Four-Understand your pattern and work on completing your unfinished business-will take a great deal of time, so it is perfectly fine (and in fact recommended) that you move on to Steps Five and Six while still working on Step Four. This may also mean that you will end up working on several steps at one time.

  The Program

  Step One: Admit to Yourself That You Are Being Emotionally Abused and Acknowledge the Damage You 've Experienced Because of It

  This step is crucial. If you are ever going to stop the emotional abuse you have been experiencing, you must become very clear that you are, in fact, being emotionally abused. If you are still confused about this, please refer back to chapter 2 and reread the descriptions of emotional abuse. Unless you are absolutely certain that you are being emotionally abused, your partner can talk you out of it, make you question your reality, or even turn things around on you and blame you for your own abuse.

  Even after you feel you are clear about being abused, you may go through periods of time when you once again doubt your perceptions or when you tend to minimize the abuse or the negative effects it has on you. For this reason it is also important that you admit to yourself just how much damage your partner's behavior has caused you. One of the best ways to do this is to put it down on paper. Putting things down in black and white makes them more real and harder to deny later on.

  EXERCISE: Your Abuse Journal

  1. Begin by writing down all the incidents of emotional abuse that you can remember. Take whatever time is necessary, but write down all the details, including what abusive tactic your partner used and how it made you feel. If there has been a great deal of abuse or if you have been with your partner for a long time, this exercise may take quite some time. But every hour that you spend writing about your experiences is an hour of healing. You need to face what has happened to you, and you need to allow yourself to feel all the emotions you've suppressed and repressed. Of course, you won't be able to remember every single incident, especially if your partner has an abusive personality and his or her behavior and attitude is constantly abusive. But do try to recall the major incidents and the feelings you had because of them.

  This writing process will undoubtedly bring up a great deal of pain and anger, and you may feel tempted to stop before you have completed it. If this occurs, remind yourself that you have been in denial for a long time and that these feelings are a necessary part of the process of coming out of denial. The more you allow yourself to feel all your emotions surrounding the abuse, the more you will step out of denial and the closer you will be to recovering from the damage inflicted on you by your partner.

  2. Review what you have written, paying particular attention to the way each incident caused you to feel. Using these feelings as your guide, make a list of all the ways the abuse has damaged you (i.e., lowered my self-esteem, caused me to doubt my perceptions, made me feel stupid).

  3. If at all possible, share your writings with a therapist, members of a support group, or a close friend. This process will bring you further out of denial. Once you've shared what happened to you with someone else, it will be far more difficult to pretend it never happened, and you deserve the support and empathy that someone close to you can provide.

  If you can't afford therapy, are not in a support group, and don't have a close friend that you feel you can trust with this information, you may wish to share part of your story on one of the chat lines devoted to emotional abuse. Check the back of the book for web addresses for some of these chat rooms. You may also wish to share your writings or your story with me, either by mail or e-mail.

  If your partner has been reading the book along with you and has been willing to admit to the abuse, it may be safe for you to share your journal writings with him or her. Although it will be painful to your partner, it may be just what she needs to come out of denial more completely and it may cause her to feel empathy for you for the first time.

  If you haven't yet broached the subject of emotional abuse with your partner, I suggest you ask him to read this book before offering your journal writings to him. Reading the book will prepare your partner for your journal writings. Otherwise it could come as a complete shock and force him to deny any truth written there. He could accuse you of making things up or of being insane, or he might even become physically abusive.

  If your partner has refused to read the book along with you and has steadfastly denied abusing you, it is probably not a good idea to share your journal writings with her. She could use your writings against you in some way, or she could become violent. Sharing your personal writings can also expose your vulnerability, and at this point, that is probably not a very good idea. Why give an abusive partner any more ammunition to use against you? Of course, it is possible that reading your journal writings could shock your partner into facing the truth about herself, but think it over carefully before taking this risk.

  4. Continue to keep a log of each and every time your partner emotionally abuses you or attempts to do so. You can do this by recording each incident or by listing the following categories and simply making a check beside each one every time an incident occurs:

  •My opinions, thoughts, suggestions, and feelings were disregarded or ridiculed.

  •My partner gave me the silent treatment.

  •My partner withheld affection as a punishment.

  •My partner ridiculed or insulted me.

  •My partner made fun of me in front of others.

  •My partner called me names.

  •My partner yelled at me.

  •My partner kept me from socializing with my fri
ends or family.

  •My partner threatened to leave me unless I did as she said.

  •My partner threatened to hurt me unless I did as he said.

  •My partner accused me of things I didn't do.

  •My partner threw things at me.

  •My partner damaged or destroyed my things or things in the house.

  In addition to logging each incident, make sure you write about your reactions to each incident and how you are now feeling about yourself and your relationship. This will help you keep your thoughts clear, when and if your partner tries to confuse you or to make you doubt your perceptions. For example:

  When Justin yells at me the way he does, I feel very frightened. I'm not sure what he'll do next, if he'll end up losing control and hitting me or even beating me up. I know I should leave, but in some ways I'm even afraid to do that because I'm not sure what he'd do if I did leave.

  Amanda is constantly telling me not to do something. At first I thought she must be right-that there were a lot of things wrong with me, that I just didn't know how to behave in a relationship. But now I'm beginning to understand that I'm not always wrong and that it is Amanda who has the problem with relationships. She always has to act like the parent or the one who is in charge. I'm getting really tired of feeling dominated by her.

  I've noticed lately that when I'm with Matt I almost always end up feeling confused about my feelings and perceptions. I'll offer an opinion about something in the news, and he'll say, "Is that really what you think, or did you just hear someone else say that?" Or I'll tell him I'd like to do something like going to a certain movie or museum, and he'll say, "I thought you didn't like that kind of movie," or "The last time we went to that museum, you didn't like it." For the longest time I questioned whether I contradicted myself all the time and thought maybe he knew me better than I know myself. But now I'm beginning to realize that he questions me all the time to keep me off balance. It's his way of maintaining control.

  Keeping such a log will help you come out of denial and stay out of denial. You may not be prepared to leave your relationship, but at least you will be forced to be honest with yourself about what kind of a relationship you are in.

  Step Two: Understand Why You Chose an Abusive Partner

  At this point you have hopefully made the connection between your past and your present. After reading chapter 4 and completing the exercises there, you now know who your original abuser was, and you hopefully recognize how and why you chose a partner who is similar to this abuser. The repetition compulsion is a powerful motivator and explains to a great extent why you chose your partner. But there are other reasons as well.

  If you were abused or neglected in any way as a child or if you grew up in an alcoholic or tremendously dysfunctional household, you are carrying the emotional scars of your childhood with you today. The abuse, deprivation, or neglect that you suffered damaged your selfesteem, causing you to underestimate your abilities and desirability. It has more than likely caused you to have difficulties with closeness and intimacy in your relationships. Because of these aftereffects, you may have felt that your choices for a romantic partner were limited and that you had to become involved with those partners who chose you, as opposed to being the one to choose a partner. In other words, you may have thought you had to take what you could get.

  If you were a victim of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse as a child, you may have been an easy target for abusive partners when you became an adult. Because survivors of childhood abuse generally have a great deal of shame and suffer from low self-esteem, they feel no one will want them. When someone does pay attention to them, they are grateful, and their gratitude and vulnerability may blind them to any obvious signs of abusiveness, a need to control or dominate, or a tendency to be possessive.

  Those with low self-esteem often become involved with partners who mirror their own image of themselves. For example, if your father constantly put you down and told you you would never amount to anything, you likely grew up doubting your own abilities. Or if your mother had no time for you and rejected you constantly, you may feel so bad about yourself that you don't feel you deserve to be loved. Therefore, when a partner comes along who echoes your parent's image of you or who mirrors your own image of yourself as unlovable, you may find this person extremely comfortable to be around. As one client told me, "I felt comfortable with her right away. It just felt right standing beside her." The reason it felt so "right" was that it was familiar-his new partner was very much like his mother and ended up treating him in similar ways.

  EXERCISE: Your Reasons for Choosing an Abusive Partner

  Make a list of the reasons why you chose an abusive partner. Due to your low self-esteem, you may feel you didn't choose at allthat you just allowed yourself to be chosen and took what you could get. If this is the case, list low self-esteem as one of your reasons. Remember to list the repetition compulsion, since it surely was a factor. Your list will not be complete unless you have at least three items listed.

  Step Three: Understand Why You Have Put Up with the Abuse

  While each step in my program is difficult, many people feel that this step is the most difficult. This is because it requires complete and utter self-honesty-the type of honesty that can be excruciatingly painful. While many of you may not have realized you were being emotionally abused, you no doubt did know that you were being mistreated. No one wants to look at why they would allow someone to mistreat them. It's embarrassing and humiliating to admit that you would allow yourself to be treated so poorly and even more degrading to admit that you have stayed with someone even after you realized you were being emotionally abused. No one wants to view themselves as a victim or as someone with such low self-esteem that she would put up with unacceptable behavior. But the truth of the matter is that you have allowed yourself to be a victim, and you did allow someone to treat you in unacceptable ways. Some of you allowed the abuse to occur for only a short time, while most people reading this book have allowed it to happen for months or even years.

  Emotional abuse does not continue unless the abused partner allows it. So why do so many women and men allow their partners to emotionally abuse them? Once again you need to look to your history for the answers. Someone who was emotionally abused in childhood usually cannot conceive that another, entirely different kind of relationship is possible. They learned how to behave in intimate relationships both from the way they were treated by their parents and from the way they observed their parents treating one another.

  A previous history of emotional abuse can also make it difficult to stand up to an abuser. When someone accuses a partner of being selfish, inconsiderate, lazy, or even crazy, instead of standing up for themselves, those who were abused as children often think to themselves, "Maybe what he's saying is true. I am selfish. My mother used to tell me all the time that I only think of myself." To make matters worse, many victims are convinced that they are at fault and therefore do not perceive themselves as abused. Having been continually blamed by their parents, they are used to taking on the blame.

  Often, emotional abusers blame their partner instead of taking responsibility for their own problems, and this can cause the partner to doubt her or his perceptions to such an extent that she or he is unable to recognize the reality of the situation. (A previous history of emotional abuse may have already caused the partner to doubt her or his perceptions.)

  Many people stay in abusive relationships because they are afraid to be alone. This is probably the most common reason why people put up with abusive behavior from their partner. Whether they are aware of it or not, many, many people stay in abusive relationships because of this fear. Being alone is so uncomfortable, so frightening to some people that they will put up with almost anything in order to avoid it. Those who were left alone as children often feel like being alone is a punishment or proof that they are unlovable. This is particularly true of those who were severely neglected as children. Those whose parents
did not respond to their cries when they were infants and toddlers and who were left all alone to cry themselves to sleep often panic at the very thought of being all alone.

  Those who have felt alone most of their lives are reluctant to end a relationship, no matter how abusive it becomes. As my client Nicki shared with me:

  My father left us when I was only three years old, and so my mother had to work every day to support us and I had to stay with babysitters all the time. By the time she picked me up at night, there was just enough time to eat before we went to bed. I always felt so alone, almost like an orphan. I didn't have any siblings, and we had no family close by. I dreamed all my life of having my own family one day. I spent my twenties all alone in a big city, dating one guy after another. It wasn't until I was thirty-one, when I met my husband and fell in love, that I found out what it was like to not be alone. Finally, I was going to have the family I always dreamed about. Even though it certainly wasn't ideal-Richard started complaining and criticizing me soon after we got married-it felt so good to know I wasn't alone, that he was always there for me. And he was. Richard can be very supportive when he wants to be. We've been though a lot of difficult times together-like the birth of my daughter Heather. It took us several years to get pregnant, and 1 had to have a cesarean. The thought of leaving him-of starting all over again--of being alone again at this time in my life is overwhelming. I just don't know if I can do it. No matter how bad about myself he makes me feel, being alone feels even worse.

  Some people try to avoid being alone because it leaves them without a sense of identity-a sense of knowing who they are-or with a horrible feeling of inner chaos or inner emptiness. This may account for the frantic and often impulsive effort on the part of many abuse victims to avoid being alone at all costs. For example, borderline individuals are dependent on others for cues as to how to behave, what to think, and how to be since they have not developed a strong sense of self. When they are alone they may feel like "there is nothing to me," and they often experience panic, crushing boredom, and dissociation. If this seems to describe you, be sure to read chapters 8 and 9.