If, on the other hand, your partner continues the offensive behavior, you will need to speak up again. If you stay silent or back down, your words of confrontation will mean nothing. Your partner will assume you were just spouting off before and that she doesn't need to take you seriously.
At times you will need to back up your words with action. This doesn't mean you threaten to end the relationship every time your partner does something that is offensive or each time he becomes abusive. If you've decided to work on your relationship, you can't go throwing that in his face or threaten to do something you're unwilling or unable to really do. Threatening to leave if he doesn't shape up can be a form of emotional blackmail, and unless you are willing to carry out the threat, it will weaken your words and your position. Setting a limit is different from a threat. When you threaten with something like "If you... I will..." you are manipulating. When you set a limit by saying something like "I will not accept.." or "I don't want you to...," you are merely stating a fact.
REMEMBER THAT You HAVE CHOICES
An important part of taking back your power is to realize that you have choices. If you have told your partner that it is unacceptable to you for him to continue to make fun of you in front of his mother and he continues to do so, you have the choice to stop going with him to his mother's house. If he continues to wave you away when you try to express your point of view, you can get up and walk out of the room. If your firm "Stop it" does not stop your partner from verbally or emotionally abusing you, you can always leave. It doesn't matter whether you are at home, at a restaurant, or at a friend's house.
Always carry enough money with you so that you can call a cab if you need to leave an uncomfortable situation. Carry phone numbers of friends and family just in case your partner ever leaves you stranded. Plan ahead to make sure you have someplace to go in case you need to leave your home. All these steps will provide you with a sense of control over your own life and strengthen your determination never to be abused again.
Specific Advice and Strategies
Here is some advice and strategies to use for specific forms of emotional abuse:
•Gaslighting: Because you have begun to doubt your sanity, intellect, or perceptions, it is essential that you focus on knowing yourself and trusting yourself. No one knows you as well as you know yourself. While you may sometimes become confused about your feelings and motives, you are the only one who lives inside your skin, and you are the only one who can figure yourself out. No one has the right to try to read your mind or to determine what your "real" motives are. As long as you believe that your partner is superior to you or that he knows you better than you know yourself, he will always have power over you.
•Criticism: Most people do not realize they are as critical as they are. They may be repeating the pattern of being critical that their parents modeled, and they may even be repeating the very same criticisms that they were given when they were children. For this reason, some people have had success with using the word "Ouch!" every time their partner is critical. Others have told a critical partner that they will only allow one criticism a day or one criticism a phone call-whatever applies.
•Criticism in the guise of "teaching": When you confront your partner with his behavior and he gives you an excuse like "I'm just being honest" or "I'm just trying to help you," tell him that he doesn't need to take on the responsibility for your life, that you are an adult who is fully capable of taking care of yourself.
RECOMMENDED FILM:
Sleeping with the Enemy (an excellent portrayal of an emotionally abusive relationship)
Unable to get our own way, often we settle for trying to prevent other people from getting their way.
SHELDON Kopp, What Took You So Long?
In chapter 4 we explored some of the reasons why you became emotionally abusive to your partner. In this chapter we are going to take an even closer look at the factors that have contributed to your abusive behavior and explore ways for you to stop the abuse once and for all. I will present alternative ways of dealing with the emotions that cause you to abuse-namely fear, anger, pain, and shame. For those who only occasionally abuse, I offer strategies to help you become aware of the triggers that precede an abusive episode. And for those who have developed a more pervasive attitude and way of behaving that is emotionally abusive, I will offer you information that will help you get to the core of your abusiveness so that you can begin to extinguish it.
In either case, it is very important for you to know that you have within yourself the power to change. I know, because I did so. It wasn't easy. It took all the strength and will that I possessed. It also required my willingness to be completely honest with myself and to step back and observe myself more objectively.
Just as I encouraged those who are abusive to read the previous chapter, I encourage those who are being abused to read this one. By gaining more understanding about why your partner becomes abusive, you will be far more able to offer the support he or she will need in order to stop the abuse and to view your partner as a wounded person instead of as a monster. This doesn't mean that it is your responsibility to help your partner to change-only your partner can make the commitment and take the steps necessary to change.
The following seven-step program has proven successful for many of the clients I have worked with who have abusive behavior. At the end of the chapter, I also offer strategies for specific types of abusive behavior.
•Step One: Admit to yourself that you are emotionally abusive and acknowledge the damage you've done.
•Step Two: Understand why you abuse.
•Step Three: Understand your pattern and work on your unfinished business from the past.
•Step Four: Admit to your partner that you have been emotionally abusive.
•Step Five: Apologize to your partner and work on developing empathy for her and for others.
•Step Six: Learn and practice ways to identify and constructively release your anger, pain, and stress.
•Step Seven: Identify your triggers and false beliefs.
It is important that you follow this program as outlined since each step will prepare you for the next. Step Three-Understand your pattern and work on your unfinished business from the past-will be an ongoing process and need not be completed before moving on to the next steps.
The Program
Step One: Admit to Yourself That You Are Emotionally Abusive and Acknowledge the Damage You 've Done
This will not be an easy task. No one wants to admit that he or she has been emotionally abusive. No one wants to admit that because of his emotionally abusive behavior, his partner and his relationship have suffered. And certainly, no one wants to admit that his behavior has actually damaged someone he loves. But if you can't admit these truths to yourself, you will not be able to save your relationship and, even more important, save yourself.
You aren't expected to do this without help, however. Throughout this chapter I will offer you information and strategies that will make admitting your abusiveness a lot easier than it would otherwise be. I can offer you this information and these strategies partly because of my extensive work with others who became abusive and partly because I have been in your shoes.
Even though you may know in your heart that it is true-that you are emotionally abusive-admitting it to yourself may cause you to feel such overwhelming guilt and shame that you find yourself repeatedly pushing the truth away and going back into denial. It may make it easier to face the truth once and for all if you understand the emotions of guilt and shame.
Many people think that guilt and shame are the same emotion, but in fact they are not. When we experience guilt, we usually fear punishment, but when we are punished or have made amends to the person we have harmed, the guilt is resolved. When we feel shame, on the other hand, we fear abandonment. In theory, we feel guilty for what we do and we feel shame for what we are. But in reality, the feelings of guilt and shame overlap. Most of us do tend to feel gui
lty if we do something we consider to be wrong, but we can also feel shame for being the kind of person to do such a thing.
Guilt can be a lot easier to deal with than shame. Although the experience of guilt can be very painful, as mentioned above, once we have admitted our offense and apologized to those we have harmed, our feelings of guilt tend to diminish. Shame is a different matter. Those who feel ashamed of themselves because of a wrongdoing may become depressed and even suicidal. This is because shame can obliterate our self-esteem and strip us of any sense of pride we once had in our accomplishments and ourselves. We often feel suddenly exposed as our carefully built self-image is stripped away. We want to hide from what we experience as the critical eyes of others.
SHAME, THE FIRST HOPE OF HEALING
We are told that shame is the painful feeling of being a flawed human being and that therefore it is an unhealthy emotion. But this isn't necessarily true. First of all, all emotions are natural and are therefore healthy; second, shame can be a message that we are failing to be who we were meant to be. Shame can be the first hope of healing. As noted author Lewis B.Smedes stated in his book Shame and Grace, "If we feel like flawed persons, it may be because we are in fact flawed."
Shame can expose us to parts of ourselves that we have not recognized before and to parts of ourselves we have been reluctant to acknowledge. In this way, it can help us to know ourselves on a very deep level.
There are two kinds of shame-healthy shame and unhealthy shame. Healthy shame is a reminder that we are less than we ought to be and less than we want to be. If we can still feel shame, it is because we are healthy enough to feel uncomfortable about our shortcomings. Those who feel shame for their less-than-noble natures should feel grateful that they still have the ability to feel it.
Unhealthy shame (or false shame) differs because it has no basis in reality. It is false because, unlike healthy shame, it is not a signal that something is wrong with us. It is unhealthy because it kills our joy and saps our energy and creative powers. Smedes explained it this way: "It is a shame we do not deserve because we are not as bad as our feelings tell us we are."
The fact that you emotionally abused your partner does not mean that you are a total failure as a partner or as a person. Nor does it take away from all the good things you have said and done for your partner and for others. What it means is that your behavior has harmed your partner (and possibly others) and for this you are responsible. Feeling healthy guilt and shame about what you've done is good in the sense that it will remind you of the changes you need to make in yourself and the work you have ahead of you. Allowing yourself to be overcome by a "shame attack" in which you begin to feel all bad, a complete failure, or completely worthless will not only drag you down but will sap you of any motivation to change.
The next thing that will help you to admit that you have been emotionally abusive is to understand how and why you became abusive. The following step will help you with this.
Step Two: Understand Why You Abuse
In chapter 4 you learned about how those with a history of neglect, abandonment, and/or abuse tend to either become victims or abusersoften mimicking their parents' behavior. This no doubt helped you understand yourself better, but there is even more that you need to learn about emotional abuse and those who abuse before you can completely understand why you became abusive. Up until now we've focused primarily on the effects of emotional abuse on children and how they carry this damage forward into their adult relationships. But sexual abuse and physical abuse can also set a person up to become emotionally abusive.
THE CONNECTION BETWEEN EMOTIONAL AND SEXUAL ABUSE
Daniel was what some people call a "rage-aholic" He frequently became enraged at the slightest provocation and would begin to yell and scream. Most often, he became enraged at his wife.
"I felt terrible about it, but somehow I just couldn't stop myself. She'd say something or do something, and all of a sudden I'd lose it. She's a very good woman and certainly doesn't deserve this kind of treatment. I'm surprised she's stuck it out with me as long as she has."
This is what Daniel shared with me when he first started seeing me for therapy. He had recently had memories of being sexually abused as a child, and he sought therapy to help him manage his flashbacks and overwhelming feelings of self-destructiveness since the memories had come up. As it turned out, his uncle and his grandfather had raped Daniel over a period of several years. While Daniel certainly was angry with his uncle and grandfather, he was even more enraged with his mother because he felt strongly that she knew it was happening and did nothing to stop it. He had one memory of his mother actually coming into the room and catching his uncle in the act. He also remembered his uncle doing it again many times and often when his mother was in the house.
At first, Daniel felt confused and bewildered by his mother's behavior. "How could my own mother refuse to help me? Why didn't she stop it? What kind of a mother was she?" he agonized over and over. But soon his confusion turned to rage. "I hate her. I never want to see her again as long as I live, and she better be happy for that because if I ever see her, I'll probably kill her!"
It's quite common for victims of sexual abuse to feel more anger toward what is called "the silent partner"-a mother, father, or other adult who does not intervene while a child is being abused-than they do the perpetrator of the crime. This is true for several reasons:
1.It often feels safer to focus anger on the nonoffending parent than it is to feel anger toward their abuser.
2.We expect parents-mothers in particular-to protect their children. Mothers who do not, especially those who put their own needs ahead of their child's, elicit tremendous anger in all of us.
3.Male children tend to lose respect for mothers who put up with abusive behavior from men or who allow men to abuse their children.
It is also quite common for male survivors of sexual abuse to take out the anger they feel toward their mothers on their female partners. It wasn't long before Daniel figured out that this is exactly what he had been doing with his wife all those years. "I took all my anger out on my wife. I hated my mother so I hated all women."
THE CONNECTION BETWEEN EMOTIONAL ABUSE AND PHYSICAL ABUSE
Jared was physically abused by his father during most of his childhood. He remained deathly afraid of his father even into his teens, when he could have physically overtaken him. "He just had this power over me. I couldn't stand up to him, and I hated myself for it. The only way I could get away from his grasp of control was to move outwhich I did at sixteen. I left home and haven't talked to him since."
Unfortunately, it was not so easy to leave behind the damage the abuse had done on Jared's psyche. For years he had been verbally abusing his wife. This is how he explained it to me.
"Whenever I got angry at someone, especially another man, I'd be too afraid to express it directly toward them. So instead I'd silently fume until I got home, and then I'd take it out on my wife because she was safe. The truth be told, I was really a coward. I was afraid to stand up to a grown man just like I'd been afraid to stand up to my father. I hated myself for my cowardice and so I hated my wife, too. I'd think to myself, what's wrong with her? How could she be with someone like me?"
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THOSE WHO BECOME ABUSIVE
It is also important to realize that abusive people tend to have certain characteristics that can predispose them to becoming abusive. These characteristics include:
•A strong desire to remain in control
•A tendency to blame others for your own problems
•Difficulty empathizing with others or an inability to empathize with others
•A tendency to be jealous and possessive
•A tendency to be emotionally needy
Do you recognize yourself in this description? If you are honest with yourself, you will probably realize that you have most, if not all, of these characteristics. But instead of just condemning and blaming yourself for this and becomi
ng overwhelmed with shame, begin to recognize these as symptoms of your problem-symptoms that you can do something about. Let's take a close look at each item.
•A strong desire to remain in control. Why do you need to be in control? More than likely, it is because for much of your life you felt so out of control. Children who are emotionally, physically, or sexually abused have no control over what is happening to them. They are ordered around, put down, criticized, and shamed. They have their emotional and physical boundaries violated constantly. It is a common reaction for survivors of any type of abuse to overcompensate for this loss of control by becoming overly controlling and domineering themselves. Some consciously think such thoughts as "No one is ever going to control me again," but usually the decision is an unconscious one. Many deliberately choose partners they can control; others are unaware that they are attracted to those who allow them to be in control of the relationship.
•A tendency to blame others for your own problems. Many who were abused as children, especially males, cope with their abuse by utilizing a form of denial called "identifying with the aggressor." When a young child refuses to acknowledge to himself that he is being victimized but instead justifies or minimizes the behavior of the abuser, he will often grow up to be very much like the abuser, behaving in the same abusive ways.
Oncehe has become abusive, a person will have even more investment in denying reality. If he were to acknowledge his own behavior and the devastating effect it has on others, he would also open the door to remembering and acknowledging his own victimization-something that seems just too painful to do. Therefore, he blames the victim for her own victimization, thus avoiding any responsibility and any recognition of his own abusive behavior.
The Emotionally Abusive Relationship_How to Stop Being Abused and How to Stop Abusing Page 12